


Same Side of the Fence

by kallah



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-02-16 10:45:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 46,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2266818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kallah/pseuds/kallah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Novelverse, follows Listen to the Man in the Barrow.  </p>
<p>2012, a small outbreak in Toronto and an unexpected meeting.</p>
<p>
  <i>The brunette studied him.  She was probably younger than he was, maybe not by much, hard to read;  wasn't impressed or worried.  "Go ahead and uncuff him.  I think we can handle him if he decides to be stupid."</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Carlos did and Billy rolled his shoulders and stretched his arms.  "Not planning on it, ma'am."</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>"Good.  Jill Valentine, BSAA Intelligence." </i>
</p>
<p>NOTE:  Degeneration, Revelations 1 and RE5 are (loosely) in line here;  Damnation, RE6 and Revelations 2 are out of continuity, though I may feel free to borrow bits from any or all of them.</p>
<p>Oof.  Sorry about the delay in posting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Here we are a thousand miles further down the road_  
Our cups are nearly empty, they still feel like a load  
Our arms, they still look shiny  
Between the rusty dents  
I never thought I'd find you here  
On the same side of the fence. 

_Tempest, Same Side of the Fence_

### 10 August 2012

Rebecca Chambers hopped out of the helicopter and down to the roof, clutching her medical bag; her staff followed quickly with their own equipment. The rotor wash was strong, peppering her with dust and small debris; a woman, olive-skinned with close-cropped dark hair, waved her across the roof to the stairs. Her team followed, the last to exit slamming the door shut to let the copter return to the airport.

"Fernandes, medic with STARS Toronto," the woman said crisply, once the noise had died down. "Dr. Chambers?"

Rebecca nodded. "Yes. What's the situation?"

Fernandes briefed them as they followed her through the roof door onto the narrow stairs, and down to an elevator. The outbreak had started around 0930 local time, almost five hours ago, and the report had come in within minutes. The hotel had been locked down, the guests confined to their rooms, the staff confined to the first floor, and medical facilities set up on the second floor. BSAA was handling exterior security and on alert to provide any necessary backup.

"Corpse is on ice."

"The pathology team will report shortly." Two of them had been dispatched to check the offered facility while the others came to collect the corpse; if the facilities were unacceptable, they'd pack the corpse in ice and fly back to Vancouver. "How many victims?"

"Mild symptoms displayed by two hotel employees working in the breakfast room and the two guests who got splattered when Redfield put down the infected. They've been isolated and put on Level 2 antiviral treatment. Treatment commenced within approximately twenty minutes of the report, with the exception of Redfield, who began treating herself immediately. Lab's been set up, blood samples are ready for testing." The elevator slowed to a stop and chimed. "We're focusing on the breakfast room and the kitchen, and checking the HVAC system and the water; kitchen employees and waitstaff have been isolated as a precaution. That's a dozen people. The guests have been confined to their rooms. Bunks for the staff will be set up on the first floor." The doors slid open onto a guest floor, where another STARS member, a stocky Asian-American man, was waiting for them.

"Mike Yang, Bravo team communications specialist," the newcomer said. "I'll be assisting as needed."

"Great." She'd never been any good at languages, and her staff was mostly limited to French and Spanish. She quickly introduced her staff: Michael Ross and Teresa Fossum were experienced with field investigations, with Genevieve Orsenna and Mark Bascomb as more recent recruits. "Dr. Fossum and Dr. Orsenna will be working with the guests other than Ms. Redfield. Dr. Bascomb, start on the bloodwork. Dr. Ross, begin with the isolated hotel workers and then move on to the rest of the staff. I'll be down to assist as soon as possible."

Her staff scattered to get to work, Fossum and Orsenna down different corridors after Yang gave them marked maps indicating occupied rooms, then Bascomb and Ross downstairs with him. The corridor was softly lit and quiet, the soft rush of air from the heating vents almost the only noise; once or twice she heard a television or music playing from inside a room. The air stank of blood, urine, and feces, missing only the heavy odor of necrosis to make the classic zombie stench; it made her twitchy and uneasy anyway, watching the shadows and the crossways between corridors as if something was about to jump out. The stench got stronger as they walked down the corridor, until they turned around a blocked-off eight-foot section that had been completely encased in plastic, from ceiling to floor. In the center, blood, bone fragments and brain matter had been splattered over a wall, with some splattering on the ceiling and the opposite wall, and smeared thickly in a line down to the stained carpet.

"That's where Redfield put down the one who turned." Fernandes gestured unnecessarily at the sealed section. The carpet and the drywall would have to be removed and burned, possibly for the entire hallway and definitely for the stained section; T-Virus in blood and neural tissue, even dried, could remain potentially infectious for weeks. "Not every day you see somebody from an NGO with a Sig P220 and a set of antivirals with your name on 'em."

"Claire's an excellent shot." She should have expected that question; very few people got anything with her name on it. "She was exposed prior to the development of the vaccine and antivirals. We'd worked together previously, so I continue monitoring her condition."

Fernandes didn't seem satisfied, but they'd already reached Claire's room, where the woman on guard rapped sharply on the door before opening it. Rebecca walked in, noting the smell of blood and antiseptic in the air. Fernandes took up a position close to the door, where she could watch Claire and shoot if necessary. She didn't draw her weapon, but her stance was alert and watchful. 

"The situation's already under control, I'm fine. Don't worry." Claire was sitting up in a chair, holding her cell phone with her left hand; she looked up and gave Rebecca an exasperated look, somewhat spoiled by the worn-out t-shirt and jeans she was wearing and the way her hair was falling out of the french twist. Usually she'd be wearing something more professional; they'd probably been disposed of as biohazards. "Rebecca's here - and no, don't call her later and harrass her. Yes, you would. I have to go, you know she pokes me with needles every time she sees me. Love you, jerk." 

Rebecca shook her head, wondering if Claire actually believed she'd convinced Chris of anything. "You could actually come visit for something other than medical reasons." She set her kit down and leaned in to do the visual examination. The bite wound was badly inflamed, the teeth marks still clear despite the wound having been cleaned and trimmed, and had some fresh blood showing, probably from moving the arm. Claire's left arm looked mildly sunburned, with an irregular, crimson mark near the shoulder and some bruises, abrasions and scratches, but no bites. Rebecca swabbed a spot on her left arm with alcohol.

"I tried that two months ago and I still got stuck with needles." She'd spent a couple weeks in Vancouver between TerraSave assignments and decided that Rebecca was spending too much time in the lab. Rebecca was still amazed that Claire could find that many good clubs, bars, and restaurants in a city she didn't even live in. "Have you considered iron supplements instead of blood?"

"First you sic Chris on me, now you hit me with bad jokes. How long ago were you bitten?"

"About five hours ago, about the time I called STARS. I used the antiviral immediately." She shot her a disgusted look. "And I did not sic Chris on you."

"I think telling him I'm working on you counts," Rebecca said, wrapping the tape around Claire's arm. "How many doses have you taken?"

"Three total of mine, last dose about an hour ago. Two of the STARS antiviral."

Rebecca drew in a sharp breath as she took the first blood-collection tube from the pack. The STARS treatment was standard regimen, but Claire hadn't needed that many doses of the other that quickly in years. "You're lucky I'd just finished another batch for you." She checked the vein and started the draw. "You've got one left?"

"Yeah." Claire winced a little and didn't look at the blood filling the tube; she could handle monsters, zombies and nutcases, but not watching her own blood drain into a collection vial.

Rebecca inverted the tube a few times once it was full, then set it in the container and took out the next tube in the sequence. "Symptoms?"

"Mood swings, headache, dizziness. The bite itched for a while, but that's eased off in the last hour or so. Two hours ago my left arm was bright red all over."

If the itching had receded, the infection was probably losing to the antivirals. The fading redness in the other arm suggested the same thing. "Fever? Hallucinations?"

Claire shook her head. "No."

Rebecca asked about intensity and onset of symptoms as she continued the blood draw, then about the outbreak. Claire's story was more detailed than the version Fernandes had given her, but the same in general; she filled in details about the other two women who'd been exposed and the exact sequence of events. The woman Claire had shot had been an office worker, not a field agent, and consequently hadn't been vaccinated.

"Lisa Rawlins. She was a political researcher, her primary field was studying government management and reporting of outbreaks, and correlating data with our epidemiologists." Claire sighed. "She was supposed to give a talk this afternoon about the outbreaks in the South last year - the Carolinas and Florida."

Rebecca had been overloaded with an outbreak in Texas and had had to send Ross to deal with it. "Did she write those papers in the last _Bioresearch_?"

"Assisted Madhavi Senapati."

One had detailed collusion between WilPharma's Indian research branch and a local government to minimize the extent of an outbreak and its starting location near or possibly _in_ a WilPharma vaccine research facility; there had been a companion paper detailing and supporting allegations of unethical and flatly illegal methods of obtaining human test subjects, and allegations of multiple disappearances in the immediate area.

"Was she working on anything else?"

"The San Francisco outbreak. I can get you a full list of her work if you need it."

That had been a well-handled outbreak, on the ground and politically; she'd never had less trouble getting reports, testimony and information from police or municipal governments. "Yeah, that might be useful." It was unlikely anyone would start an outbreak to get at a single person; hired killers were faster, cheaper and more effective. "How's Chris?" He'd called her in as a consulting doctor as soon as he and Jill had gotten back from Africa, much to the irritation of the BSAA's medical division. She hadn't been able to see him and Jill in a month, though, and had been hoping to find an extra couple of days off to go back down to the States and check on them.

"Better, but still worn out and stressed. I was supposed to stop by to see him and Jill after this conference."

"Not telling him won't help." Chris knew exactly when his sister was trying to keep him from worrying, was good at guessing about what, and was never happy about it.

Claire firmly changed the subject. "I saw David in Seattle week before last."

"Yeah, he came up for a couple of days after the conference was over. He said it was a complete waste."

"Zombies would have been more productive."

"About like usual, then?" Rebecca set the last blood sample in the case, then removed the tape from Claire's arm. "Here's your antivirals." She took the cold-case with the vials out of her pack and handed it to Claire. "Let me know how many you use before that - " she nodded at Claire's left arm - "is back to normal. Two more doses of the regular anti-viral, forty-eight hours -"

"-isolation and observation, more if symptoms persists or the blood tests aren't clean." Claire finished the sentence for her in a perfect mimicry of Rebecca's usual delivery. "I've enforced the protocols. I was there when you _wrote_ the protocols."

Rebecca glared at her. "You and Chris keep forgetting the first one. _Prevent your own infection first._ There are probably resistant strains developing, and things that aren't even T-Virus out there. What do you want me to do, stuff you in a cryo-tube until I can cure you?"

"Not necessary," Claire said, wincing.

"Then be more careful!"

"I am not careless." Claire bit off each word. "Chris is not careless. We do not ignore the rule about preventing our own infection first. We know what we're doing."

"Fine. Just remember somebody, eventually, is going to have to tell one of you the other's dead." She'd almost prefer taking on a Tyrant with a peashooter to having to deliver that news to either Redfield.

"Yeah, I know," Claire said tiredly, looking away to the window.

"I'll check in on you tonight. Report if anything changes."

Claire gave her a completely exasperated look. "I know, I know. Same cell number and all the other contact information, if nothing else, get hold of Chris."

"Still have to give you the speech," Rebecca said, then repeated the usual spiel about what the information would be used for and how long it would be retained before she left.

"How long did you say you worked with Redfield?" Fernandes asked, once they'd left the room.

"A few years. It was a while back." Claire had been in STARS before going back to university; it wasn't a secret, and there were plenty of people still in STARS who'd known her then, but it tended to inspire a lot of questions she didn't have time for. Fortunately Fossum and Orsenna emerged at that point for a brief conference. Two more guests, both of whom had eaten breakfast at about the same time as the dead woman, had developed itchy, crazed-glass rashes and confused thinking and had the treatment plans changed to reflect it. If the disease progressed much past that point, there was no remedy except a bullet to the head.

She collected the samples Fossum and Orsenna had already taken to take to the lab with Claire's samples. "Right. I'll drop these off, head downstairs to assist Ross, and we'll meet in the lab when we've finished this round." 

The pathologists called in to report that the autopsy facilities were acceptable and they were collecting the body immediately. Once the autopsy was complete and all required samples collected, they'd see the body cremated before returning to Vancouver to begin tests.

\-----

Billy leaned against the wall, wondering where the hell the rest of the research team was. The lobby was crowded with most of the people who'd been working this morning, chattering or sleeping or staring into space; the kitchen workers had been moved into another room. The one new doc, a middle-aged guy with graying blond hair, was working his way slowly around the room with the help of one of the STARS people to translate where needed. He'd hated waiting on a mission more than anything; he still hated waiting, even if he was a civilian now and this wasn't any kind of mission. Forty-three hours until he could get the hell out of here, get the hell out of Toronto. 

Gotten complacent, should have moved on years ago. He was screwed if they wanted prints, might be screwed if they just checked his papers or passed a photo in the wrong place.

There wasn't a damn thing he could do about it now, so he put the thought aside. He hadn't eaten since early this morning, he was damned hungry, and they hadn't offered to feed anybody yet. Probably MREs whenever somebody remembered, nobody could get in with a delivery and the kitchen was being searched. He rubbed the injection site absently; it felt hot and sore, kind of like a tetanus shot, the skin reddening a little. The blood draw site was bruised up; the medic had bitched that his veins sucked. Had the same problem in the Marines. The door to his left opened and the medic came back through with another doc. The medic gestured at him and he scowled; the medic glared back. Probably calling him an asshole, since he'd told her off after the third time she hadn't gotten the blood sample. They'd fucking well better find somebody else to do it if they needed another one. The new doc turned and looked at him, surprise flashing across her face, probably about as much as he felt.

Rebecca'd probably never figured to see him again either. He looked away, glancing at the other doc, still well away from him. Not a damn thing to do but wait. She started working on the other side, a little more efficiently than the other guy, working her way toward him. She'd changed plenty over the years, a hell of a lot more confident, like she'd seen all this before and knew exactly what she was doing. The rest of the crew wasn't as freaked out when she finished talking to them; still wary of anybody in a uniform with a gun, but not as freaked.

He'd forgotten how damned short she was. He loomed over her even slouched against the wall, but she wasn't impressed.

"Mr. Levitz?" Nice and smooth, as if she'd never seen him before. Professional.

"Who's asking?"

Her voice was calm and steady, despite the flash of annoyance on her face. "I'm Dr. Chambers with STARS. You were working down in the kitchen area when the outbreak started, correct?"

"Loading dock. Hauling in deliveries."

"Were there any new people doing the deliveries?"

He shook his head, surprised she wasn't asking who the deliveries were from. Might have that information from the manager, though. "Don't know the regulars, just filling in for somebody."

"Have you worked here before?"

Fuck. STARS and BSAA didn't enforce immigration law, that might be the only thing saving his ass about now. "Used to work as a bouncer when they had a nightclub in here." He'd gotten on well enough with some of the guys to pick up some day jobs when they were short-handed.

She didn't push the subject. The manager'd probably tell her the same thing anyway. "Did you notice anything unusual this morning?" 

"Didn't see anybody running around with a test tube or anything." STARS needed to write a better questionnaire.

"Can't have it that easy." She didn't roll her eyes at him even though it sounded like she wanted to. Not nearly as easy to rattle as she used to be. "Did you observe anything or anyone out of place?"

"Too busy. Didn't see anybody on this end slacking, either." He stopped, thinking. "Boss got into it with one of the delivery guys, didn't hear what happened."

"Do you remember which service?" 

He shook his head. He'd been out on the loading dock, too far away and too much noise to make out more than shouting, and it had been over by the time he hauled the next load in.

"How did you learn there had been an outbreak?"

He had to think about it a minute. "Housekeeping called for a manager, something about a shooting. Heard some gossip about somebody getting bitten." By the look on her face, he wasn't supposed to know something, whether it was the shooting or the bite or both. "Then STARS showed up." He rubbed the injection spot absently.

"Something wrong?" The question was more worried than sharp, and he could see her eyes shift down to his arm, see her stop before she reached out to check it herself. Probably professional, not personal.

Should have known better. "Damned sore, feels hot."

"That's normal." She sounded relieved and vaguely annoyed, maybe at the medic who ditched the side-effects lecture. "Usual side effects of the shot are soreness, redness, sometimes some bruising and swelling. Bad signs are a bulls-eye rash, red and white lines leading away from the site, or if it turns white. If you notice any of those, report them immediately."

"So not infection?" He'd never seen the initial stages, just the end result.

"Not infection," she confirmed. "We'll be keeping a close eye on all of you for any signs of infection."

Then she started asking the real questions, going through the morning, careful not to lead his answers or get into anything personal. Times, who'd been around when, who'd been delivering what, the order, where stuff had gone. Hadn't had anything to do with the guests, hadn't seen them except from a distance. Heard of TerraSave on the news a few times, some kind of anti-bioterrorism group, hadn't heard of the other groups at the conference.

"Thanks for your information. Is there anything else you need to know?"

"You planning on feeding us sometime today?"

"After we finish the interviews," she replied. "Can't promise anything good. Can't tell you when the kitchen will be available, either."

"No pineapple pizzas?" It was a stab in the dark; he remembered something about pineapple pizza and orange food from back then.

It got him a laugh; it was a tired laugh, and he noticed the dark circles under her eyes. Must be a hell of a job. "Nope. No pepperoni either." She must've remembered that conversation too. "We'll be eating the same thing you are, though, if that makes you feel better."

She gave him what sounded like a canned speech about how long he would be held, what would happen, and what would be done with his personal information, before going on to the next person. He dropped into a chair and didn't watch her go, thinking about getting out. She didn't need his help this time, neither of them needed him getting caught, she'd be fine. STARS did feed them later, MREs and some extra bottled water, the coffee in the MRE still a miserable imitation of coffee, and set up some bunkrooms. 

Forty hours to go.

\-----

Rebecca stood up and stretched, rolling her shoulders and stretching her arms, then rubbing her back. The makeshift lab wasn't particularly comfortable to work in, the tables and chairs set for people noticeably taller than she was, and she'd wasted time rearranging her work station to get everything in easy reach. These makeshift facilities were far too insecure to risk culturing the virus, but she'd developed a test a few years ago to pick up on some of the effects the virus had on the blood; it took about an hour to run and she'd only just started it.

She picked up the first batch of reports. Claire had tested positive for a multitude of T-Virus antibodies; no surprise between her history and her profession. No one else was showing symptoms, so the infection had most likely been contained. The symptoms in the infected were improving, though one of the guests and two of the workers were suffering vision problems and severe nausea, not uncommon side effects of the antivirals; nausea cleared up within days and the vision problems usually cleared up within weeks of the antivirals being discontinued. Nobody'd tried to break or take advantage of isolation yet. Bascomb had narrowed down the possibilities down to the C2B series; she scanned Claire's history and test results, noting that was a new one for her. 

She skimmed through the rest of the reports, not sure if she was looking for Billy's or just looking; she didn't find a report for him, and she didn't see anything clearly out of place. She'd expected to never see him again, had been careful not to look, not to appear there was anything to look for. She hadn't expected to recognize him right away, hadn't expected him to recognize her, not more than ten years later. Nobody else seemed to have noticed, though, or understood. Claire would have, but she'd been upstairs, and Rebecca felt a flash of guilt at how relieved she was. 

She put the reports down, rolled her shoulders again and reached back, trying to find a stubborn knot with her hand. As usual, it didn't work.

Billy hadn't been bitten, might not have been exposed if he hadn't been in or near the affected room. If they were careful and lucky, they'd both get out of this safe and undiscovered. He looked like he'd been doing fine since then, he'd be fine once he got out of here; she'd go back to Vancouver and everything would go back to whatever passed for normal for both of then. And they'd never see each other again. They shouldn't have seen each other this time.

She blinked suddenly, swaying on her feet; she looked at the clock and realized it was fifteen minutes later. Coffee, cold water on the face, anything to keep her awake until the last test finished. Maybe if she crashed hard enough, the nightmares wouldn't start up again. She nearly jumped out of her skin when her cell went off, the sound harsh and loud in the empty room. Her hands were shaking when she grabbed it to look at the number, and she took a deep breath before answering.

"Chris, don't you ever sleep?"

"How's Claire?" 

"Last time I checked on her, she was going to try to sleep." She paused and collapsed back into her chair. "She turned off her cell, didn't she?"

She'd seen Chris bone-tired and moving by sheer Redfield stubborness before, back when they were still doing guerilla operations against Umbrella, and he'd sounded about like this. " _Rebecca_. Just tell me what's going on." He did not understand the concept of patient privacy when it came to Claire. Not that Claire was any better when the situation was reversed.

"Claire's going to be fine," she told him, trying to sound more authoritative than tired. "We've got the situation in hand. I'll call you -"

"Like you called me today?"

She'd walked right into that one, and tried to ignore it. " - if the situation changes." She briefed him quickly on the outbreak, leaving out that Claire had been bitten and had to shoot one of her own staff. "We're still working on the source and the strain." Reminded, she booted up her laptop to check on the strains Bascomb had identified.

"No accident." Too many outbreaks were caused by would-be terrorists losing control of the virus and infecting themselves; scenarios like this, where the perpetrators couldn't be quickly found, or at least the immediate origin of the outbreak, were a rarity. She logged into the secure net and started the search.

"Not likely. How's Jill?"

"Fine," Chris said, and then paused at Jill's voice in the background. "She says she doesn't care how hungry you are, feed off someone else."

"She and Claire need some new jokes. And I haven't taken any blood samples from her in a month."

"You still need to take fewer blood samples. I can be there tomorrow."

"She's fine, really." She found the relevant sections and started reading the file. The two strains had been collected in a still-unsolved incident in South Africa three years ago, and in an also-unsolved incident in Brazil last year. "You can yell at her on the phone in the morning. Even if you managed to talk your way into the building, yelling through a sealed door just doesn't work." The words slipped out before she realized what she'd done.

"How bad is it?" Chris demanded.

"The treatment is working. Standard isolation period, possibly extended given her history." She yawned hugely; definitely time for coffee. Just enough to get her through the last test. "Yell at her voicemail if you need to."

"She never listens to me."

"That's what she says about you." She paused, and said, somewhat more sharply than she'd really meant, "And neither of you ever listen to _me_."

She winced, almost hearing Chris counting to ten in the ensuing silence. "Neither of us is reckless. We do not ignore the rule about preventing our own infection. We - " She heard Jill snap at him in the background; Chris muffled the phone to argue with her and there was a rustling noise as the phone got passed off.

"Take a damn vacation," Jill ordered. "Every time you get stressed, you start yelling at everybody else."

"This is the second Canadian outbreak in two months - " The previous one had been in Ottawa; BSAA had handled the initial control and quarantine, and STARS had run the search for the culprits. "And the other - "

"You have a _staff_ , Rebecca. They're supposed to be capable of handling an investigation on their own." Chris grumbled in the background. "You're going to have Chris underfoot if you've been yelling at Claire like this."

"If he shows up right now, I'll just need a blood sample for comparison." Chris hated blood draws only slightly less than Claire did.

"Stop complaining about the vampire jokes if you're going to do that."

"If you're going to keep making them, I'm going to deserve them."

Jill made an exasperated noise. "You need to back the hell off, Rebecca. They're both experienced field operatives and you don't get to determine their level of acceptable risk." 

"Not even when I get to deal with them later?" 

" _I_ have to deal with them both." She sounded decidedly unsympathetic.

There was another argument and Chris took the phone back. "Keep an eye on Claire for me. Rumor mill says TriCell kept extensive files on anti-bioterrorism NGOs and their staff." He probably had the files and was combing through them to find out what they had on Claire.

She considered responses and gave up. "All right. I can only handle one Redfield at a time."

He ordered her again to call him if anything happened and hung up.

Rebecca sent an email to Carlos before logging off; he was technically BSAA North America, but he knew a lot of people in the South American branch and might know who she'd need to talk to there. She'd have to request the South Africa report from HQ. She rubbed her temples and went in search of coffee, boiling some water in the electric kettle and dumping instant coffee in her mug. Claire was going to be justifiably pissed, but she'd probably settle for yelling at her in the morning instead of going to court or to STARS. Probably. She had to be more careful, anyway. She poured water into the mug and stirred the coffee, then added creamer and sugar before taking it back to the work table.

Coffee or not, she dozed off a few times waiting for the bloodwork to finally finish. Bascomb came back in as she finished redacting the files, putting off sending them to the shared drive until she'd gone over them when a little more awake. He looked about as rested as she felt, dark hair untidy and dark eyes bleary; he cradled a large mug of coffee in his hands.

"Have you been working all night, Dr. Chambers?"

"Probably," she said, pushing herself to sit upright instead of slumping. "Got anything?"

"I need to run double-checks on a blood sample. There was a positive reaction."

"False positive?"

Bascomb nodded. "Possibly. It didn't react to the same strains the samples from the other patients did."

"Which strain did it react to?"

"A moderate reaction to A1A3 and a strong one to A1B1."

"That's unusual." A-strain designations were reserved for the strains found in the survivors of the mansion incident and the few survivors of Raccoon City itself. Or for the antibodies, anyway; they'd retrieved only two actual viral strains that matched up with the antibodies. "The patient may have been exposed years ago."

"I am aware of the length of time T-Virus antibodies persist in the body, Dr. Chambers." Bascomb snapped out the words with unnecessary emphasis.

She was too tired to deal with Bascomb's ego tonight. This morning. Whatever. "Good. Don't jump to conclusions like you did in Ottawa."

Bascomb shot her a look and very pointedly continued working.

She logged back on to check the two A-strains Bascomb had referred to, thinking she must be really tired to be having that much trouble remembering them; something was rattling at the back of her brain, telling her this was important. A1A3 was shared by all the mansion survivors and about twenty-five percent of the few Raccoon City survivors, including both Claire and Leon. It hadn't appeared in any incident since Raccoon died, so the patient almost had to have been in the area that summer; that didn't help much, since the Arklay forest had been popular with hikers, hunters and naturalists. She switched to the file for A1B1. Until today, it had been exclusive to her. 

_Billy_. It had to be, none of the others had that antibody, and he'd been with her through everything before the mansion. She couldn't think of any way to warn him, arrange events so he could get away; she was too damn tired for any kind of plan at all.

"Have that report ready for me tomorrow. Dr. Ross and I will handle interviews and blood tests."

Bascomb didn't respond, and she left for the bunkroom.


	2. Chapter 2

### 11 August 2012

Twenty-seven hours left and some asshole had to throw a goddamn wrench in the works. Billy'd finished eating, seriously wishing for some decent coffee, and slung himself down in the lobby, ignoring the TV in favor of a newsmagazine, when the guy had stalked up. Not Rebecca or the other guy from yesterday, yet another doc who hadn't bothered introducing himself or anything else before he started in with the questions. Guy was about his age, maybe a little younger, looked and sounded pissed, didn't know shit about interrogation. Rebecca'd done a better job even with the lousy questions, he'd heard enough to figure the other doc had been about as good at it. He watched a tic in the guy's jaw get worse by the minute as he gave him the shortest answers possible, trying to force the questions around to what he was really getting at.

"Talk to your boss," Billy said dismissively. "Told her all this yesterday."

Guy's face got red at that, the tic really jumping. "You sound like you know Dr. Chambers."

Fuck. Somebody must have noticed something. "Heard of her from the news." She didn't do much in the way of press conferences, just got mentioned here and there when outbreaks happened in Canada or there was some development in bioterrorism or anti-bioterrorism.

"Keep up with bioterrorism?"

"Hits the news all the time." The other doc from yesterday came downstairs, probably to start another round of questions, looked across the room, and spoke into his radio before starting to talk to the rest of the staff in the lobby.

"So you've been watching the news about this?"

It clicked. Asshole hadn't been down here when Rebecca was, asshole wasn't a Marine and didn't know shit. Guy wanted to show her up and thought he might be in on it, that was all, and Billy was pissed off at the insinuation and relieved at the idea that he hadn't been identified. "Nope."

Guy didn't believe him, probably figured him for some idiot who'd pull shit to land on the news. "Dr. Chambers doesn't do television news."

"I read." Billy held up the magazine, glad it didn't have anything on bioterrorism. "Try it sometime."

"You heard about the outbreak fast."

"Everybody heard about it damned fast." Christ, did he think nobody talked or overheard shit? Everybody'd known something was up within five minutes of housekeeping calling for a manager and the basics within ten.

Rebecca walked into the lobby, looking tired as hell and thoroughly pissed, and headed straight for them.

"You didn't seem surprised," the asshole went on. Who the hell had said that? He'd been surprised all right, just not useless about it.

"Dr. Bascomb, I need to see you upstairs." Rebecca's voice was cold and crisp, a 'don't fucking start shit' voice if he'd ever heard one.

He spun around and started to protest, too stupid or stubborn to pay attention to her tone. "Dr. Chambers, I'm - "

"Immediately."

Asshole finally figured out that there wasn't any room for arguing or negotiation with that tone and started to walk, slowly enough that he was probably trying to overhear anything she said. Maybe asshole had a clue about something or maybe he was just looking for ammo. Rebecca flicked a look at his back that said she knew perfectly damned well what he was doing.

"Everybody on your staff that much of an asshole?"

"Mr. Levitz, I apologize for the breach in procedure." She wasn't going to run her staff down to a guy she wasn't supposed to know, even if she wasn't going to defend him, either. The asshole wasn't out of hearing range and his back stiffened. She paused, thinking about how to phrase whatever it was she had to say, probably something that meant he wasn't getting out of here as fast as he wanted. "There's no infection on this floor, but the tests showed evidence of possible exposure. We'll have to ask more questions to determine whether it's related to this outbreak, and we may need a second blood sample." 

"So when do we get out of here?" That wasn't good, whatever it meant. Maybe some idiot here had been involved and asshole jumped to conclusions.

"I hope tomorrow morning at the latest, but I can't offer any guarantees. You were between jobs? We can offer official documentation if you need it." 

He shook his head. "Nah." Nobody wanted STARS poking around where he usually got to work. Asshole didn't know that, he wasn't sure if Rebecca did; he'd heard they'd been careful about that kind of thing as much as immigration problems, so maybe she did. "Need to get out of here and find another one." Somewhere else. Head out to Calgary or Winnipeg, maybe; Ottawa had a regional STARS HQ, Vancouver was where Rebecca worked, and he didn't speak French so Montreal was out.

"Good luck," she said. "Dr. Ross will answer any other questions you have."

She walked away, stopping to talk briefly to the other doc, then catching up easily to the asshole; he picked up speed as she caught up, back to a normal walking speed, and they headed toward the elevators. The other doc worked his way around the room, trying to pretend things were normal; Billy might have appreciated the idea if the asshole hadn't already fucked that up royally. He wanted to hear Rebecca rip the asshole a new one, he wanted to know what the hell was going on, and he wanted the fuck out of here.

"Mr. Levitz? I'm Dr. Michael Ross," the other doc said when he finally made it around. He looked tired, but not half as bad as Rebecca did. "Dr. Chambers asked me to explain what's going on here." He gestured toward an empty space by the sealed-off breakfast room and the kitchens, and walked him over there. Privacy a little too fucking late.

"About damn time."

"Right. I believe Dr. Chambers told you we'd seen signs of possible exposure. However, we don't know when the exposure happened or whether it's related to this specific outbreak. We need to know whether you could have been exposed during some other incident."

"I have the damn disease or I don't," Billy snapped. Rebecca'd said something about no infection, but he wasn't sure why they kept going on about exposure. "So which is it?"

The doc shook his head. "No, no. It's - do you understand how normal vaccines work? A weak or inactivated disease-causing agent - a virus, bacterium or toxin - is injected into your system. This triggers an immune system response that creates antibodies for that disease, so that when or if you're exposed to live disease-causing agents, the immune system can destroy it before you become sick." He paused, and apparently decided Billy understood. "T-virus is very environmentally sensitive - it can't survive in the air, or on most surfaces, for more than a few minutes, creating quantities of weakened or dead virus in an outbreak. Many people, not all, can create antibodies against it in those conditions." He sighed. "Not that it helps them much if we can't find and treat them in time; the virus replicates so quickly almost everyone's immune system is overwhelmed." 

Billy frowned, trying to make sense of all that. "So you breathe around a zombie and pick up a bunch of dead virus?"

"That's essentially it. Then your body reacts to the dead virus, creating antibodies," the doc said. "Antibodies from T-Virus, like antibodies from other diseases, can persist in the body for years, and confuse matters when we're trying to determine the source of any given outbreak."

All ten-odd years since the Umbrella facility, he'd bet. Had to be why the asshole stomped over and started grilling him. Leeches, zombies, baboons, plenty of monsters to breathe on him. The doc started asking questions about where he'd been during the outbreak, the last day or two before the outbreak, and over the last several years, starting with whether he'd been back to the States recently. Billy hadn't. He hadn't been to Ottawa, either. Hadn't been anywhere near an outbreak, which was royally fucking up his attempts to get out of this, didn't leave him any plausible way he could have been exposed. He'd never been to Raccoon City, claimed not to have been in the area; far as he could remember, Ragithon was at least an hour away by car.

"Thank you, Mr. Levitz. Someone will be down to talk to you as soon as possible if we need another blood sample. Any more questions?"

None the doc could answer. He shook his head and the doc moved on to the next group. Shit. Billy racked his brain, wishing he hadn't taken the damn job and trying to figure out where the hell to go if he got out of the damn hotel. Somewhere big enough to get lost in. Head down to Mexcio, maybe, if he could figure out how. 

\-----

Rebecca's head was throbbing painfully just behind her left eye, her pulse was pounding, and it took a lot of effort to keep from grinding her teeth; she closed the conference room door without quite slamming it behind them and gestured Bascomb further into the room to limit eavesdropping. "Dr. Bascomb. I am suspending you immediately for gross insubordination and interference in an outbreak investigation." She raised a hand when he started to protest and spoke over him. "Your lab access, here and in Vancouver, has been revoked. I will file a request for your permanent removal from my lab, with a recommendation that you be removed from all bioweapon-related field research, on my return to Vancouver."

"Interference? I was - "

"Making a complete ass of yourself and a wreck of this investigation." She took a deep breath; this wasn't the first time Bascomb had pulled shit and he didn't know anything about Billy. He wasn't going to know anything, either. "If Mr. Levitz was involved in this incident, he is now quite aware he's a suspect. If he wasn't, he's going to be pissed off and uncooperative. People _talk_ , Bascomb - the entire hotel staff now knows you were interrogating Levitz." TerraSave and the other NGOs might not have heard about it yet, but she wasn't going to bet that they wouldn't. Claire, at least, never assumed that service workers were stupid or unobservant. Maybe she should hire her to run a training session at the lab.

"I don't think - "

"Obviously." She ignored his furious look. "Return to quarters and remain there until the team returns to Vancouver. Do not attempt to interfere with the investigation: do not enter the lab and do not interrogate, watch or harrass any member of the hotel staff or any guest. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am," Bascomb snapped.

"Good. Now move!"

Rebecca took a deep breath and let it out slowly after he left. Every year she had to fire somebody, occasionally more than one, and it never got easier; she hated this part of the job. There'd be a mountain of paperwork on her desk when she got back, too. Well, it wouldn't get any better for standing around here; she needed to check in on Claire, then check in with Fossum and Orsenna, and then talk to Ross once he'd finished the second round of questions. No, maybe she needed to reorder that. Claire's treatment was working, and she'd better get her head together before talking to her again or she'd be in for an interrogation. Damn, she needed to meet with the Toronto STARS team too and get their reports; maybe they'd found something useful. She'd start with Ross, then.

He'd finished talking to the unexposed staff, all of whom were likely to be safe to release at the end of the observation period and all of whom wanted out. She shadowed him through dealing with the exposed staff. They were all likely to be given a clean bill of health but were still worried about paychecks, jobs and bills, muttering darkly about corporate not wanting to pay them for the duration of the outbreak. No one mentioned immigration, but that would be a major issue as well. The lab's discretionary fund was low after Ottawa, and she probably couldn't do much to help; Claire would probably have some useful ideas. The staff's story about the last day or two before the outbreak was about the same as the day of the outbreak, doing the same routine more or less in the same order. The conference had been routine for them, nothing memorable. None of them had been involved or near any other outbreaks, though one of them had a cousin in Ottawa; she thought he'd been out in the suburbs, not near the actual outbreak.

They stopped in the conference room afterward to discuss the situation.

"Bascomb's out?"

"If I could ship him back to New York, I would," Rebecca said. "We're stuck with him until the paperwork goes through."

"Unfortunate. I'd like to run another blood test on Levitz to confirm Bascomb's results, if he'll cooperate."

"Is he being uncooperative?"

"He's evasive and avoidant." Ross thought for a moment. "His story about the outbreak has been both internally consistent and consistent with the other workers. He says he's been taking day jobs and looking for steady work since he got laid off, and I don't think he's lying about that; it'll likely check out."

"What is he lying about?"

"He knows how he got exposed. Something clicked when I explained that T-Virus antibodies persist in the body, as if he suddenly understood exactly what had happened." Ross shook his head and sighed. "He wasn't talking."

She'd hired him because he was that good; she just hadn't expected it to backfire on her. "Well, do the blood test and check out his story first. We'll worry about anything else later." There were plenty of ways to hold people of interest, but Rebecca had been discouraging using them in anything but dire circumstances for years; STARS had barely survived the aftermath of Raccoon City and the fall of Umbrella. "Did you find out anything else?"

"Housekeeping said that some of their supplies in a storage room were in the wrong place. The storage room has a vent that connects to the one in the breakfast room." He sighed. "They also said that things got moved or put back wrong fairly often, so it may be nothing. I told the Toronto team about it and they're checking it out."

It didn't sound promising. "Damn, I need to tell them about Bascomb."

"Right. I'll need their help to check out parts of Levitz's story also."

They interrupted an extremely tense discussion between the BSAA's on-site leader and the Toronto team leader, Tom Marotti, about who was responsible for a reporter's successful breach of security. The reporter hadn't made it further than the loading dock. The BSAA leader left to investigate the breach further, Marotti glaring at her departing back.

"You've confirmed he actually is a reporter?"

Marotti nodded. "Dick Morgan. He's been underfoot before. You should stay out of it, he's probably angling for a hatchet job on somebody. You, us, an NGO, long as he can get some blood he doesn't care. We stuck him in quarantine and Fernandes is taking blood to be safe."

She'd have to warn Claire. "Understood."

The remote camera had finally shown up from HQ, delayed by a near-riot at an unrelated protest on the other side of the city. "Just getting started. It'll take a few hours. We'll inform you when we find anything, or if we don't find anything."

"Thanks, I appreciate it."

"What's the status?"

"No new signs of infection, and treatment appears to be working. Barring unexpected developments, we should be able to begin release in - " she checked the time - "approximately twenty-six hours for people with no evidence of exposure. Depending on response to treatment, it will be at least another forty-eight hours for those exposed, possibly longer. I'll have a list for you by the end of the day. We're still verifying the strain involved."

They briefly discussed release protocols, since the Toronto team would be handling security when people were allowed to leave; keeping the press out of the way was going to be the most difficult part, though the BSAA was supposed to be assisting with that part. Marotti called up one of the other team members to help Ross check out Billy's story, and Rebecca headed upstairs. Fossum and Orsenna had been doing fine without her help; the exposed guests had all responded well to treatment, though an extra twenty-four hours was necessary to confirm it. They were both unsurprised by Bascomb's firing, making Rebecca wonder if she'd been missing things again. Orsenna volunteered to take over for Bascomb, much to Rebecca's relief.

"He is competent at strain identification," Orsenna pointed out. "I'll double-check the results just in case."

"Thank you. We'll have a meeting tonight."

They went on their way and Rebecca went to check on Claire.

\-----

"He does this every time. You know he does this every time. And you keep falling for it!" Claire took a deep breath, getting a grip on her temper before Fernandes decided to intervene; the Toronto medic was looking decidedly pissed off about the rant. Rebecca wasn't doing anything to stop her, though her mouth was tight and her body tense; she looked like she hadn't been sleeping again. Chris had probably called her in the middle of the night when she was trying to finish something. "Shunt him to voicemail. Tell him off and hang up. I don't care how, just let me handle what and when to tell him."

"Do I get to pay bail if he shows up anyway?"

"I had him calmed down, so yeah. You can bail him out and you can deal with him being pissed off." This was definitely not helping with Fernandes. "Stop giving him information unless I'm actually incapacitated, Rebecca."

Rebecca nodded. "So. What's your condition today?"

Her left arm was back to normal, no redness at all. The bite on her right arm looked worse than it had yesterday, bruising purple-black and swollen, but it didn't itch and the flesh wasn't dying. It had hurt like hell getting it cleaned this morning, too. She didn't have a headache, a fever, or any of the other standard symptoms of infection, no goddamn _spiders_ or muttering shadows - she limited that to no hallucinations with Fernandes listening, but she'd have to wait out the standard isolation period anyway, and maybe longer, since her arm had flared up.

"I'll need another blood draw to re-test," Rebecca warned her. "Also, I may need your professional help."

"No problem," Claire said, translating that readily as people worried about the outbreak costing them money if corporate didn't want to pay them for quarantine, jobs, and maybe screwing up their immigration status. Some of the groups at the conference were exactly the people she needed to speak to, especially for legal matters, and the ones who weren't would have contacts. They might have gotten started, actually, she'd been too out of it yesterday to do more than argue with Chris and deal with medical treatment. "Did STARS handle the death announcement or will that be my job?"

"You gave us the contact information, and we passed it along to STARS in Oregon. They've informed the family," Fernandes said, giving her a wary look and shifting position as if she'd become a threat.

Claire glared at the STARS medic. She must have just forgotten with all the stress. "Good." It was always harder when they used to be someone you knew, and she doubted the family wanted to hear from her anyway. She'd deleted everything she'd written trying to think of something to say so far.

Rebecca shot Fernandes a look and the other woman shifted back into a neutral position. "Okay. Oh, I should warn you - some reporter named Dick Morgan broke quarantine into the hotel."

"That asshole." He'd royally pissed off just about everyone who'd dealt with him for more than five minutes. "What happened?"

"He's in quarantine for now. I've got to go. Call me if you need me."

She wanted to tell Rebecca a lot of things, starting with 'turn off your phone, ignore Chris, and get some sleep', but not in front of Fernandes; she'd pushed Rebecca's considerable patience enough yelling at her in front of a stranger for professional lapses. "All right. I'll see you later."

Rebecca and Fernandes left. Claire got up and paced, wishing she could open the damn window for some fresh air and maybe some street noises. It was too damned quiet and getting rank with medical smells, and she hated the lousy fake art on the walls and the stupid bland colors and the lousy coffeemaker. She'd finished off the last of the coffee when Chris called to yell at her anyway. Not that turning off her phone let her sleep; she'd spent the night running down what else she could have done for Lisa and the lengthy list of people she hadn't been able to save. She turned on the radio, finally finding a decent rock station, and glared out the window. She'd finished up the paperwork she had and everything else meant meeting with people, which was the point of the now-trashed conference, and she couldn't do most of her workout because of the damned bite. She called her team to check on them; Miriam and Carolyn were recovering, the others were fine and wanted to know when they were getting out of here. She coudn't tell them any more than they already knew, and reassured them that her treatment was working. 

Nobody brought up Lisa, and Claire wasn't sure if that was good or not. She still didn't know what to tell the family. Instead of working on it, she called the office to remind them that she still wasn't dead and to check on her budget. There wasn't enough to cover any legal bills, but she could contribute to grocery and bill funds without too much trouble.

"Will you just switch to a desk job already?"

"This wasn't field work. Harvardville wasn't field work. I don't have _trouble_ with field work." She'd had, in the last five years of fieldwork, three bioweapon-related injuries and one fatality, when the BSAA had missed some infected dogs. "Do I need to write or say anything to Lisa's family?"

"Let us handle that."

"All right. I'll let you know when they let me out of quarantine." Hopefully tomorrow, but she wasn't willing to bet on it, considering the amount of anti-virus she'd had to use; more likely the day after. She made a little small talk and disconnected, then checked her contact list. Judith Bourgoin would know what was going on and who to talk to.

"Claire, how are you? These people won't tell me anything, as usual."

"Recovering," she said. "What have you heard?"

"A few interesting things. They expect to let us out of quarantine tomorrow. Your people?"

"Also recovering." Except Lisa. "I've been told we may be needed professionally here."

"Ah, we were expecting something like that. I don't suppose you have any details?"

"No, but it's probably the usual."

"Naturally."

The Canadian groups had already made some tentative plans, and even better, the legal aid groups hadn't run out of money yet; getting caught in an outbreak, especially for service workers, was hell on continued or future employment. Immigration problems didn't help. Claire jotted down names and what might be needed for setup, wishing she didn't have to work through Rebecca; it was a lot easier to coordinate activity when she could talk to whoever was on the scene directly. She warned Judith about Morgan, and heard about an incident in the lobby with one of Rebecca's people and a guy named Levitz. Then they discussed the trouble that would show up around the fifteenth anniversary of Raccoon City's destruction; there were plenty of rumors about terrorist activity, laws ranging from dubious to idiotic being proposed, their respective loonies had to be talked out of stupid tricks, and the media were already starting to run worthless puff pieces that managed to ignore Umbrella completely in favor of cheap sentimentalism.

"I'll give you a call back when I've talked to the others and we've got firm plans," Judith said. "Let me know if you get more details."

"Of course. I'll talk to you later then."

The room felt even smaller when she hung up the phone.

\-----

The Toronto team had retrieved a small dispersion device from a vent attached to the breakfast room, photographed it, and sealed it up for later testing; once it had been tested and decontaminated, it would be studied to figure out how it worked and hopefully where it had come from. Bascomb's strain identification had been accurate, both on a C2B as cause of the outbreak and Billy's possession of A1A3 and A1B1 antibodies, and the information had been sent to the pathology team to compare to the test results from Rawlins' body. Claire was positive for C2B antibodies as well, which were new to her also.

"Nothing links him to this outbreak," Ross confirmed. "His story checks out, and no one reports him out-of-place. The only trouble with him after STARS arrived was that he got angry when Fernandes had a hard time getting a vein for the blood draw. It took me two tries as well - he's got terrible veins."

"Nothing illegal about that." Fossum sounded sympathetic; she was one of the hardest people in the lab to draw from. "Unless he got physical."

"No, just sarcastic."

Some things never changed. It did explain Fernandes' warning to watch out for the tattooed asshole with the big mouth; at least Billy'd had the sense to get his distinctive tattoo transformed into a pair of intricate, colorful full sleeves.

"How did he react when you told him?"

"He was pissed off and confused at first - part of that was due to Bascomb's undiplomatic approach, but I need to work on my explanations. When he did understand, I'm certain he knew exactly what happened."

"And he's not saying."

"Evasive and avoidant, possibly outright lying." Ross shook his head. "He could have illegally crossed the border into Canada, been part of a grow op in Arklay - "

"Was that a problem?" Fossum asked.

Rebecca nodded. "There was a big bust just after I was assigned to Raccoon. Arklay Forest was huge and almost impossible to search, so the op could have been going for years." There wasn't much left of the forest, after all the fires when Raccoon had been nuked; the underground coal fires started when the lab under the city exploded were hindering any possible recovery.

"Marotti ran a check for us with the Toronto PD; nothing."

"Dr. Chambers, how did you end up with a unique antibody?"

"We never did figure that out." Marcus' virus had been notably different than the other, probably later strains, and dealing with his leeches probably had something to do with it. "I might have just encountered something different without realizing it; I had other concerns at the time." Mostly involving finding ways to not die and not get blown up.

Ross leaned back in his chair. "We have no evidence he's linked to this incident. All we've got for his antibodies is speculation, and since Raccoon's records were destroyed with the city, no way to prove anything that far back. We'll get a lot of pushback if we try to hold him."

Orsenna propped her chin in her hand and sighed. "Bascomb blew it. If Levitz hasn't done it himself, somebody's going to call up the NGOs in this hotel, and they like to raise hell in the courts and the media."

"Dr. Chambers, can you get Ms. Redfield to sit on it if it happens?"

"No. First, she doesn't take interference well." Chris had tried that _once_ ; it had taken an entire week for them both to cool down after the resulting fight. "Second, even if she did, I doubt she has enough influence to get all the other groups to shut up. Third, whenever that got out - and it would - we'd get even worse publicity." And Claire would be out of a job and probably out of the field permanently, unless she signed on with the BSAA or went back to STARS.

Ross grimaced. "She's right. That would backfire terribly."

"We'll have to let him go." STARS didn't need the bad publicity, and neither she nor Billy needed any publicity at all. "Try interviewing him again, get his contact information and give him ours." If any of his contact information was good in forty-eight hours, she'd eat her badge. Then again, disappearing that fast would make him look guilty of something. "Who do we need to continue holding?"

Another twenty-four hours for the exposed guests and staff. Fossum compiled a list of those cleared to be released, including Billy, and a second list of those required to remain for observation. The reporter had thirty-six hours before the end of his official quarantine.

"His blood is clean," Orsenna said. "Any idea how he got in?"

"Marotti was discussing that with the BSAA. I didn't hear a conclusion. Anything else to report?"

There was a round of headshaking. "Alright, meeting over."

She checked her cell after they left and called Claire back.

"I'm fine. Talked to my colleagues in the other organizations."

She grabbed an empty clipboard and stuffed some scrap paper into it. "What did they say?"

She scribbled notes quickly; most of the physical items - tables, chairs, etc. - would be in the hotel already and would require coordinating with the hotel manager. She'd have to check with Marotti to get the various pre-paid cards and extra brochures for the legal aid groups into the building, though, and they'd be staying until the rest of the staff were released. "Anything else?"

"So who's Levitz?"

She sighed. "How do you do that?"

"I use my cell for things besides arguing with my brother. What happened?"

"Confidentiality, Claire. That thing you were yelling at me and Chris about."

"Three different groups got calls about it."

"What story did you get?"

"Your doc - clearly not you, since it's always a guy - stomped downstairs and went straight for Levitz. That doc got shipped off - by a female doc, sometimes even you - and a different guy pissed off Levitz again and took some more blood."

Efficient and reasonably accurate. "You get great scene reports. Want to run a 'don't assume service workers are idiots' seminar for me sometime?"

"I have my own people to do that for. Planning to yell at HQ over the people they send you?"

"Wouldn't do any good. Limited pool of candidates as it is." She wasn't looking forward to replacing Bascomb. "I'll come check on you tonight."

"Great. Smuggle me in a double cheeseburger."

"I don't get anything other than MREs either. See you later."

Marotti and part of the STARS team were in one of the conference rooms, working on paperwork and grumbling about goddamn NGOs; apparently multiple home offices had been demanding updates. Marotti took the list as if it was a bomb, then read over it, relaxing slightly and muttering something about Redfield making them act sane. He and Yang briefly discussed it, deciding it was probably doable but wouldn't get someone named Bourgoin off their backs anyway, and that it might keep the civilians calmed down if they could pull it off. She reported the current results and that the reporter's blood came up clean on the first round, though he'd have to wait out the quarantine period anyway. She handed over the lists of people able to be released.

"We'll handle it. Anything else?"

"Let me borrow Fernandes for a few, I've got to do a check-in on Ms. Redfield. Actually, if you can work out the timing you need, I'll pass it on to her."

Yang and Marotti worked it out quickly and wrote it down. "Right. See you in the morning."

She stopped to check in with Fossum and Orsenna before heading up to check on Claire. Claire's wound looked as good as a bite wound got; she cleaned and redressed it, noting no signs of necrosis or other T-virus related tissue damage, and no sign yet of more ordinary infections either. She'd only needed one more dose of her antiviral before the redness in her left arm had disappeared completely, and no fever or other symptoms. She took the timing sheet and nodded, then made some calls, one to this Bourgoin, apparently getting everything started.

"That should do it. When do I get out?"

"Day after tomorrow, if tomorrow's tests and observations are good." No one had ever gone seventy-two hours after a bite without demonstrating symptoms; most started well down the zombie path long before then. "You'll need to come up to the lab for more tests ASAP, possibly a re-vaccination as well."

"I'll check in with the office and get it scheduled. Assuming I can get on a plane."

The airlines had gotten extremely paranoid after Harvardville; being in the same city as an outbreak sometimes got people stuck on a no-fly list for months. "Let me know if you have trouble."

"All right. Maybe I'll rent a car instead. Ignore Chris if he calls."

"You know that won't work. I'll see you in the morning."


	3. Chapter 3

## 12 August 2012

The NGOs showed up first thing, the bosses talking to the manager and the others chattering loudly, probably just relieved to be out of the damn rooms. The manager waved him and a couple other guys over to haul tables and chairs for a few extra bucks; they set up on one side of the lobby, the STARS team at the side entrance to the parking lot. One of the STARS guys, the translator, showed up with a bunch of boxes, looking annoyed; the NGOs collected the boxes and started setting up their aid tables. They got set up in less than twenty minutes, organized and efficient, even with all the chatter. Two groups had grocery, gas, transit and phone cards to hand out, another was offering rent and utility assistance, and two legal aid groups had brochures and business cards, and lawyers ready to talk.

"You were stuck here with the rest of us," one of the guys pointed out.

The woman shrugged. "S'what we do. Besides, we got off a lot easier than TerraSave did."

About half the TerraSave people were still under quarantine and wouldn't be out until tomorrow; must have been one of theirs that got bit, or maybe turned. Nobody was saying, either because they didn't know or they'd been told not to give out details.

"Always give out cards?" Seemed useless if anything big happened.

"Works better when everything's up and running, like this. You get something bigger, infrastructure's wrecked or looted, then yeah, we bring in food and gear."

They'd get information about how many people from someone on-site - TerraSave did a lot of search-and-rescue and were good at coordinating - then bring in food, clothes, toiletries, all the stuff people needed right away, except medicine; neither of these groups had doctors on staff. Sounded complicated. He got a grocery card and gas card to get him stocked up and out of town, then moved out of the way where he could still see what was going on. The rest of the staff lined up to pick up cards, a lot of people talked to legal aid, and he was surprised to pick out his own name in the ruckus a few times. Somebody had told the NGOs about the asshole's attempt to interrogate him, maybe more than one, and eventually one of the girls from reception gestured at him.

"That's Bill Levitz there."

One of the women from the legal aid group, a tall black woman in an classy, probably expensive, suit, came around the table and handed him a business card. "Jen Brooks, Greater Ontario Legal Aid. I handle much of our law-enforcement related work."

"Even bioterrorism?"

"Eliminating legal protections hasn't stopped any bioterror incident yet, Mr. Levitz." He figured that was meant for the STARS team moving through to set up, and one of them scowled at Brooks. "Would you mind telling me what happened?"

Billy shrugged. "Asshole doesn't like his boss and picked me to show her up. She shipped him off and sent the other guy, Ross, around to explain and take more goddamned blood." It only took Ross two tries but the draw site was still bruised to hell. "Must have been clean since they're letting me out."

She walked him through the story, why he thought the asshole didn't like his boss and why'd he gotten picked out, and what Rebecca'd done. "Which doctor was the first?"

Billy had to think about it. "He didn't introduce himself, don't remember what Dr. Chambers called him. Haven't seen him since."

"What did Dr. Ross say?"

"I didn't follow all the way. Got it clear that I didn't get infected, anyway."

Brooks looked unconvinced, but someone called her back to the table. "Keep the card, Mr. Levitz, and call me if you get any trouble."

He kept the card. He wouldn't call, wasn't a damn thing any of these groups could do if the Marines were still after him, but it'd look bad if he tossed it. The rest of the guests, the ones who hadn't been attending the conference, showed up a little while later, looking cranky, and avoided the NGOs' tables. Some of them got snide about the NGOs playing to the press. Assholes didn't understand how a few lost days could fuck a person over. BSAA people came in frequently, discussing conditions outside with the STARS team; it sounded like a madhouse of press out there, all complaining about being kept away from the hotel.

A madhouse full of fucking _cameras_. Shit.

The research team arrived a bit later, and the STARS captain came over to talk to Rebecca. He didn't see the asshole, and the rest of them looked tired; Rebecca looked like she hadn't slept since she'd gotten here. Christ, didn't they have enough staff to give her a few hours sleep? Maybe she was just overworking; not his business, nothing he could do about it. He shifted his attention to the exit, waiting for a chance to get out. The rush slowed as everyone got ready to get the hell out of the fucking hotel. The NGOs were planning to stay through tomorrow to assist the staff that wasn't being let out today; TerraSave was waiting for the rest of their group to get released, and the ones still under quarantine were going stir-crazy. He half-listened to all the talk, guests trying to figure out how the hell they were getting home, staff trying to sort out their other jobs and their bills, and NGO people speculating on why Rebecca handled things personally, comparing outbreaks and talking about what might happen next year when the fifteenth anniversary of Raccoon City happened. There'd been mass vigils and protests on the tenth anniversary, along with claims that the protests had been riots and accusations of police brutality. He'd seen a bit of the ones in Toronto and figured the cops had escalated the whole damn mess so they'd have an excuse to arrest people. 

Least that hadn't happened this time. STARS announced the release would begin, sorting them into four groups, one for each doc with the research team. He got Ross's line, probably deliberately; just as well he didn't face Rebecca again, be hell to give everything away at the last minute. When it was finally his turn, Dr. Ross checked his immunization mark, handed him an information packet with warnings about symptoms, emergency contact information for STARS here in Toronto and a card for the Vancouver lab, then cleared him to go. The BSAA had set up a cordon around the parking lot, shouting press waving cameras from behind them; he kept his head down and turned away as he ran for his car. Better replace it before he got out of town.

\-----

Rebecca stared down at her MRE with even less appetite than usual, then forced herself to choke it down. The release had gone smoothly, Billy had gone away quietly, probably never to be seen again, and no one seemed to be interested in anything other than how he'd been exposed. The press was complaining loudly about being kept away from the survivors, but not any worse than Ottawa. The pathology team was en route to Vancouver after seeing to the cremation and arranging for the ashes to be returned to Rawlins' family; at least the family hadn't tried to fight the cremation. Sometimes they did, even after they explained that it was an absolute necessity to prevent any further infection; that always ended in public recriminations, and once an accusation that they'd stolen the body and given them someone else's ashes. She shook it off. The tests and observations were clean, and the rest, including Claire, could be released tomorrow. She was pleased at how well the incident had been handled, Billy's unexpected appearance and Bascomb's insubordination aside; one casualty, the entire incident tightly contained to a single building, and no panic inside the building or out.

Her phone vibrated; she picked it up, saw the name and answered. "Carlos! Wasn't expecting you to call."

"You think I don't want to talk to a lovely lady?" She could almost hear the grin. "Maybe I should come up to Vancouver when I get some leave."

"You never change." She shook her head, smiling a little.

"You make that sound bad." Noise in the background, orders. "Sorry, looks like we're moving out fast. Let me give you names."

She scribbled down names and contact info for requesting official reports and the team leader for the operation. "Thanks."

"Heard it got a little weird."

She alerted to the hesitancy in his voice. "Weird how?"

"About a third of the team came back burned. Said all the gunk in the lower levels exploded."

"Damn." Carlos had never seen T-Veronica in action, but he'd heard about it from the rest of them. "That's a problem. Thanks for the information."

"No problem, beautiful. Got to run." He disconnected.

She finished her MRE without paying attention to it and hurried back to the lab. Rawlins' displayed symptoms were classic T-Virus, amped and rapid the way the later strains were, without any of the T-Veronica signs; it was impossible to tell if she'd been hallucinating like Claire, of course, but she'd demonstrated no increased size, strength or speed, no visible mutations. She emailed the pathology team for any internal oddities; she'd run the usual comparison testing herself on her return to the lab. C2B itself might not be T-Veronica-based, but somebody clearly had access to it, and that never ended well. She emailed the contacts Carlos provided, checked the BSAA site, and emailed a request for the reports from the South African incident, hoping nobody was going to get pissy about sharing information with STARS again. It took forever to get anything when they did. She had an email from STARS HQ acknowledging the Bascomb incident and requesting a full report. It would have to wait until she got back to Vancouver and more secure access. Bascomb hadn't been causing any problems, at least; Ross said he'd barely spoken since being confined to quarters. 

No more lab work to be done, nothing else she could do until she got the reports. She might as well get some sleep.

\-----

## [13 August 2012]

Claire had been packed and ready to go long before STARS showed up to tell her she was clear. So had Miriam and Carolyn, and the rest of their team; they were downstairs as soon they'd been cleared. Her team assisted the other groups, and she found a corner to talk to some of the other NGO leaders. Everything had gone as smoothly as could be expected; yesterday's release had been smooth and efficient, STARS had behaved themselves, and the research team had apparently made a solid effort to keep people informed and calm. Levitz had been released without incident, claiming that the whole thing was somebody trying to show up Rebecca; Jen Brooks thought he'd hadn't given her the whole story, but didn't disbelieve that part either. They made arrangements to distribute the papers that had been intended to be read at the conference, but the real meat, the discussions and coordinated planning, was a loss; she could meet up with a few of these people individually, but not as a group until next year's conference, at which point they'd be short on time to put anything into action.

She and Judith were comparing notes on their respective lunatic fringes - Judith never had gotten a coherent answer about the bear costumes - when one of the BSAA personnel scowled at her when walking past, and then went to talk to Rebecca. Rebecca shot Claire an exasperated look. 

"What was that all about?"

"Excuse me, Judith, I need to make a call."

She stepped aside, called Chris, got shunted to voicemail and called Jill.

"I am not getting in the middle of this." She heard Chris say something about ten minutes.

"Goddammit."

"I plan to abandon you both in the parking lot until you're done yelling."

"The parking lot full of press? Rebecca'd probably let you dump us in a conference room."

"And then she'd steal some blood because she forgot to eat again."

"She'll do that anyway - " The BSAA woman was heading her direction. "Sorry, BSAA needs to talk to me, I'll see you when you get here."

She spent most of the next ten minutes convincing the BSAA captain that she hadn't talked Chris into doing this, that she was not leaving before the rest of her team, and that no, Dr. Chambers hadn't arranged it either. Given how exasperated Rebecca was, the last part was the easiest. Chris showed up with Jill just a few minutes later and swept her into a bear hug.

"I told you I was fine." She hugged him back; no matter how old she got or how much time they'd spent trying not to get shot in various Umbrella bases, she always felt better with her big brother around. Even when he was being a jerk. "Go apologize to Rebecca for doubting her."

"You are not fine and I - Hi, Rebecca." Chris let go, looking slightly sheepish.

"Hi, Chris. Conference room. Now." Rebecca led them to a small, hastily cleared conference room. "One: Not allowed to disrupt our release schedule. Two: Not allowed to piss anybody off more than they are already. Claire, you've got -" she checked her watch - " fifteen minutes before we start releasing people. Don't yell so loud I can hear you down the hall. Jill, can you talk with the local BSAA?"

"Sure." Both of them left. 

"First you pester her in the middle of the night and now you show up unexpectedly." Claire scowled at him. "I told you to apologize."

"I did not pester her - don't change the subject. How bad was it?"

"Minor, really - " She'd have another ugly scar, but she'd stopped counting them years ago. "You didn't - "

" _Claire._ "

"I hate it when you interrupt me. You really didn't have to come all the way up here." She rubbed her temples and told him the story. Lisa had gone from feeling mildly ill to mindless so damned fast, less than half an hour, and she'd gotten to Claire while she was shouting at the others to get back and reaching for her weapon. "And this wasn't aimed at me. If it was aimed at anyone, it was the entire conference."

"If it was, it'd have hit some less vaccinated group and caused more damage. I keep telling you people are gunning for you."

"I tell _you_ that and look where it gets me."

Chris scowled at her. "My point is that the assholes who _make_ bioweapons want to destroy all these groups, including yours, and they know too damned much about you personally.

"And you?"

"And me. Stop changing the subject."

Claire didn't ask how he had access, but TriCell's pharmaceutical division - shuttered and its assets sold off to pay restitution and fines - had had extensive files on everyone they considered a threat. The bioweapon research had been the first priority - Uroboros, Plagas, various permutations of T-Virus - and the rest of the data was later. It sounded like they had all of Umbrella and Wilpharma's files, as well as whatever else they'd dug up on their own; Chris had found references to Claire and her file in his own file and a bunch of reports, starting with Raccoon, but hadn't located the file itself yet. Ste. Veronique had only a brief mention as an Ashford legacy facility, with Dr. Monteiro and Veronique Ashford as directors; there were references, but Chris hadn't found any files for them yet, or the other Ashfords.

"One more piece of bad news - Downing's getting out on parole."

"Already? I thought he was supposed to have a few more years before he was eligible."

"Yeah, he was supposed to."

Which sounded like bribery or legal trickery or both. She glanced at her watch. "Dammit, time to go. Yes, I have to be there."

Back in the lobby, Jill was talking quietly with the BSAA captain. The other NGOs had cleaned up their tables, boxed up whatever they had left, and sorted themselves out; Miriam and Carolyn had organized her team under instructions from a Dr. Orsenna. Everything went smoothly and efficently, documentation provided for those who wanted it, the usual canned speeches about personal information, information packet with contact information, etc. The hotel staff was processed first, then the NGOs; Judith's group was next to last, before TerraSave, and Judith waved briskly before following her team outside. Claire sent her team ahead first, watching as they passed through the checkpoint and headed out into the parking lot. She scheduled a follow-up with Rebecca for a week from next Friday, assuming nothing else went wrong and she could get on a plane; she had paperwork, new recruit orientations, and training sessions for most of the next month.

"I'll block out the afternoon. Call me as soon as you have travel plans or if you can't get a flight; there's probably a STARS transport available."

Claire nodded and went back to Chris as Rebecca and her team got up and stretched, and STARS started breaking down the checkpoint. She poked Chris and told him to go apologize, and he actually went over to talk to Rebecca. He probably wasn't apologizing, but she seemed fine. Well, as fine as someone who hadn't slept enough in days got, anyway. Rebecca went to talk to Jill, then Chris and Jill came back over to her. Rebecca was heading straight back to Vancouver and had promised to block out time for Jill once she got back. Chris took her out for coffee and breakfast, then back to the BSAA base and flew her back to the States.


	4. Chapter 4

### [11 September 2012]

#### Vancouver

Rebecca locked her condo door behind her just as her cell vibrated. She checked it and answered on the way down the stairs. "Hey, Carlos. What's up?"

"Got some more information for you."

She'd gotten all the official reports on the South African and Brazilian incidents, and some personal comments from the Brazilian one; neither had had immediate commonalities with Toronto, beyond the same viral strain. The personal commentary had been more alarming; a sea of gunk that sounded alarmingly like Ste. Selene had exploded in the lower level of a lab in Brazil, but the place had been completely stripped. No trace of T-Veronica had been reported. There had been no trace of it in Rawlins' body, either, or in the device; it had small wheels and a camera, clearly intended to be operated from a distance, and a small dispersion device on one side. The camera wouldn't have been able to see to target, but Marotti reported that the hotel's security system had been compromised; if it was the same people, or they'd been able to take advantage of someone else's hacking, they'd have had access to the hotel cameras.

"Not secure here, just give me the outline."

"I started asking around. That exploding gunk showed up a couple years before the one I told you about, still in Brazil. Friend of mine's digging a little."

"Tell them to be careful." Rebecca navigated past her neighbor with the big friendly mutts, getting soundly thumped by wildly-wagging tails in the process.

"They know, trust me." Carlos' friends were frequently on the edge of or outside the law, though he swore none of them had anything to do with bioterrorism. "I'll send you the information."

"Good, thanks." Rebecca hurried out the door, startled to see a police car and a pair of cops. "Hang on a second."

"Dr. Rebecca Chambers?"

"Yes, can I help you?"

"Dr. Chambers, you are under arrest, on charges of aiding and abetting the escape of United States Marine Lieutenant William Coen - "

They'd found out about Billy after all. Carlos had gone silent, but she could hear him breathing as the cop listed the charges. She was silent too, she needed to call a lawyer before she said a word. She disconnected the call just before they took her cell phone and handcuffed her. 

\-----

#### TerraSave Headquarters, Northern Illinois

Claire wiped sweat off her forehead and looked over the mock urban training area. The session was going very well, the new recruits cooperating to find the people playing civilians and contain or take down the ones playing infected. The latter part was almost never necessary, sites were well-cleared before TerraSave was allowed in, but she preferred not to take chances. There were some people having trouble with lift-and-carry for injured people; she'd have to address that in the afternoon training session. Her phone vibrated; she checked it briefly, surprised to see a text from Carlos Oliveira. 'Urgent. Trouble Rebecca.'

She headed for the training center's small office, closed the door and called him. "It's Claire, I got your text."

"Rebecca got arrested a few minutes ago. In Vancouver."

He'd been on the phone with her, had heard the whole thing up to what he suspected was the cell phone being taken away. "I couldn't make it all out. Something about a Marine, an escaped criminal, Cohen or something like that."

Claire grabbed a pad of paper and scribbled it down. "Never heard of him. You?"

"No. What would Rebecca be doing hanging around a Marine?"

"That's a good question." BSAA or STARS handled almost all outbreaks in the US and Canada; the closest to military involvement she'd seen had been the National Guard as security and evacuation assistance. The Marines did run their own biohazard training program, but she wasn't sure BSAA or STARS had been involved in the planning of it at all. "I'll see what I can find out. What were you calling her about, was it important?"

"Information about some outbreaks in Brazil. You want it?"

"Yeah, I can send it on." She'd met Rebecca's second, Dr. Ross, once or twice. Assuming he didn't have anything to do with this, she'd find his contact info. "I'll start calling people and find out what's going on. Get hold of me later."

"Got it." Carlos hung up.

Claire tapped her fingers on the desk, thinking. She texted Leon and Chris - she wasn't sure Leon was even in the country, and Chris was probably running a training session of his own. She called Barry; he didn't pick up and she left a voicemail. David was as startled as she was, had no idea who this Marine could be, and agreed to call John. She quickly checked the Vancouver news and found nothing. She took a deep breath, focused, and went back out to her training session. At least this batch didn't try to turn the end of the session into a paintball match. Afterward, there was a discussion of the session, a lunch meeting with some of TerraSave's political division about strategies to fight a particularly bone-headed law, and then she finally had a chance to check her phone. Chris had texted her to call him that night, Barry had left a message that he'd try her later, and Tess had sent her a brief notice about a STARS-related arrest in Vancouver. She asked Tess for more information; she probably knew more than Claire did already.

\-----

#### Vancouver

Rebecca's lawyer arrived an hour or so later. The final list of charges was alarmingly long, starting with her false report of Billy's death in 1998, aiding and abetting his escape and illegal border-crossing, and ending with aiding and abetting his disappearance from Toronto. How was she going to prove she hadn't known where he was since she left him in Arklay? 

"I can attempt to appeal, but it's highly unlikely to be granted."

She shook her head. "Don't appeal." No sense wasting time and money on something that wasn't going to work; there wasn't a statute of limitations on murder and probably not on assisting a convicted murderer either.

The lawyer nodded. "STARS has already assigned a lawyer in the States to your case. You'll probably be extradited before the end of the week. I recommend making no statements at all until you speak to them."

She nodded. "I understand."

She'd been denied bail as a flight risk and an appeal was unlikely to be heard before the extradition; the lawyer in the States was trying to get bail set there before her arrival. It was likely to be extremely high since she'd still be considered a flight risk. She had some money saved up, but she didn't know if it would be enough, or how she'd access it; normally she'd try to get Claire or David to help, but that might be a little ... complicated now. A female cop escorted her back to her cell when the lawyer left; she was alone for now, whether a coincidence or extra security she didn't know. 

Her career was over. Even if she stayed out of prison by some miracle, her security clearance was toast and she was out of STARS. BSAA wouldn't touch her, and neither would the government, either in Canada or the States.

_You pays your money and you takes your choice._

__Well, she'd taken her choice, fourteen years ago in Arklay Forest. She pulled her knees up to her chest, shivering, and wondered what she'd have done if she'd known everything back then. Maybe she'd just have let Alpha team think she died with everyone else and run away._ _

__\-----_ _

#### TerraSave Headquarters

__The afternoon training session went a little more roughly than the first one; a wrenched shoulder and a sprained ankle, neither of them hers, a shouting match which Claire broke up with an acid comment on remembering what the job was, and a near-collapse from dehydration requiring a lecture on water bottles not being for decoration. The post-session discussion centered on co-operation and taking care of yourself during a mission; her people getting injured made everyone else's job more dangerous and more difficult. She headed back to her office, checking her phone on the way; Leon had texted back a brief 'Looking into it', nothing from David yet. She'd just gotten there when Barry called._ _

__"Hey, Barry. Sorry, I've been running search-and-rescue training all day." And yesterday, and tomorrow._ _

__"Ha. Moira's about to finish up her paramedic training, still wants to apply to TerraSave."_ _

__"Well, we can always use paramedics." She was worried about Moira; she'd given up on traditional college sometime during her freshman year, bounced around odd jobs for a while, then suddenly decided she wanted to join TerraSave. That she was finishing paramedic training was an improvement, but Claire still wasn't sure the younger woman could handle the stress._ _

__"Yeah. So what happened to Rebecca?"_ _

__She relayed what Carlos had told her. "Haven't had a chance to check the Vancouver news yet. Does any of this sound familiar?"_ _

__"Marines? Give me a minute." Barry was briefly silent and she grabbed her note from earlier. "Right after we got back, before we all got suspended, I helped Rebecca file a report about some dead Marines from Ragithon."_ _

__Claire jotted down _Marines - Ragithon - Jul 1998_. "What happened?"_ _

__"Bravos found them after they set down. Two Marines and a prisoner, all dead. She said - " He paused, thinking. "She said it looked like the crash threw them all out of the vehicle and then the dogs got 'em."_ _

__She added _prisoner_. "Remember any names?"_ _

__"Been too long. Marines showed up right before we got thrown out of the station, pissed as hell. They found the vehicle but no bodies, and they weren't interested in zombie dogs."_ _

__"Nobody was."_ _

__"Yeah. You really think that's what this is all about?"_ _

__"I wish I knew." Something fourteen years old wasn't promising, and Rebecca'd never said a word about it. "Anything else you can think of?"_ _

__"Not a damned thing. See if I can come up with anything later." There were voices in the background. "Kathy and Moira got back, I should go."_ _

__"Yeah, tell them I said hi. I'll call as soon as I know more."_ _

__Barry disconnected, and she studied her notes; if this was it, which one was Cohen, and why did it matter now? She stuck the note in her pocket, hoping to get more information soon, and scowled at the stack of paperwork on her desk; she was going to need all her time off once she got a clearer idea what had happened, so she couldn't sneak out early. She slogged through the stack, mostly financial papers for the search-and-rescue division, and about halfway through she hit the bill for Lisa Rawlins' memorial plaque, ready to be installed in the lobby. TerraSave had sent flowers to the memorial service and made a donation to a cancer charity. Claire had sent flowers and a donation in her own name. She still didn't know what had happened; Rebecca hadn't finished her investigation when she'd gone for the follow-up. She checked to be sure the bill had been paid on time, then filed it away, and got through most of it before the end of the day._ _

__She called Chris once she got home. Jill had been doing some digging of her own; the arrest had taken a couple weeks to coordinate with different agencies, and the Marines had apparently been pushing for it. She still hadn't found out why, and Barry's recollection didn't help; neither of them remembered the event at all. None of the US military branches were officially interested in BSAA help, and she doubted they'd be interested in STARS help either, which left them back where they'd started._ _

__"I'm surprised there hasn't been a formal statement yet."_ _

__"They'll want to keep the entire thing quiet," Jill said. "Could embarrass a lot of people."_ _

__"Yeah. Think they'll try to get information out of the rest of us?"_ _

__"Yes. Mostly likely Chris, Barry and me first; everyone else met her after Arklay, so you'll be secondary."_ _

__She'd have to talk to one of TerraSave's lawyers, though none of them were criminal lawyers; maybe they'd be able to recommend someone. As long as she'd known Rebecca, someone would try to claim she was keeping secrets._ _

__"What happens with your antivirals?"_ _

__"I wish I knew." HQ had left her file sealed, so not even Rebecca's second knew about - or was supposed to know about - Ste. Selene. "I've got a new batch from Toronto, so I have some breathing room."_ _

__"Find out," Chris ordered. "Are you coming up at the end of the month?"_ _

__"Yeah, I'll be there on the 25th, probably late afternoon. Are you coming here for Christmas?"_ _

__"Yeah, we actually got leave this year. Should be there the 23rd and leave the 26th."_ _

__Claire added it to her planner. "Great." Usually she went to see them; it wasn't often they could get leave that time of year. They talked about whether Claire had been spending enough time at the shooting range, her new motorcycle, Chris getting to test a new light aircraft for the BSAA, and what exactly Dick Valentine had been up to lately. She finally had to hang up to get some dinner._ _

__"Love you. See you in a couple weeks."_ _

__"Love you too."_ _

__She stuck a frozen dinner in the microwave, checked her messages, and booted up her laptop to start searching on her own._ _


	5. Chapter 5

### 13 September 2012

#### Northern Illinois, 6:30AM CDT

Two days of research and she still had only the faintest idea what was going on, but she had the basics. Somebody - she suspected that asshole Morgan - had gotten photos of Levitz and distributed them for unknown reasons. The photos had gotten to the Marines one way or another, and they'd decided he was their missing criminal William Coen. She glanced at the pictures Tess had found and had to agree; if Levitz wasn't Coen, he was his twin brother.

Claire drummed her fingers on the table. Searching on his name hadn't turned up much useful, just a few single-line references to his Marine career scattered around a hell of a lot of false leads, and a vague reference to something bad in Africa in an old military magazine someone had scanned. It didn't even mention which part of Africa, much less anything useful like a country, and she couldn't narrow it down without a little more information; even trying to narrow the years to mid-nineties hadn't helped. It did suggest that whatever he'd done had been under classified or otherwise secretive circumstances.

It didn't tell her why Rebecca had reported him dead, or what had happened in Toronto. And it wasn't the kind of thing she wanted to use TerraSave or TerraSave contacts to dig into, either; too many of her colleagues were still jumpy about STARS at all, and anything touching Rebecca's credibility was going to make it worse. STARS HQ should be running its own investigation, but she hadn't heard anything yet. 

Her cell phone buzzed; she checked the number and answered. "David?"

"I'll be in town on business later today."

_That_ was unexpected. "Oh, really? There's a great bar not far from my work if you want a beer later."

"That sounds fine. Shall I meet you there?"

"Sounds good. Need a place to stay?"

"No, I've got a hotel room."

She gave him the address and directions to the bar and arranged a time to meet, then realized she needed to get to work in a hurry.

#### Vancouver 5:00AM EDT

It was barely dawn, if that, her lawyer wasn't present, and those were definitely not federal agents; everything they wore screamed cheap and disposable, from flimsy sunglasses to badly-fitted suits to fake-leather shoes. Nobody present but the jail guards and the two imposter agents, worse and worse. One of the impostors handed over some paperwork for a jail guard to sign.

"She's all yours."

"Hey! Where's my lawyer? I - "

"Shut up." The other imposter backhanded her in the mouth, knocking her off-balance. She managed not to fall, even with her hands cuffed behind her back, and tasted blood; he'd split her lip and she'd bitten the inside of her cheek. "Thank you for your cooperation," he told the jail guards, then grabbed her by the shoulder and shoved her toward the door. "Move it."

She stumbled and staggered on the way out, only partly an attempt to delay them; the imposter kept shoving her off-balance. No help here, nobody was likely to believe her over even mediocre imposters, and nowhere to run, they had a vehicle right outside, a big black car. The back door opened and the imposter knocked her over, then shoved her in head-first, nearly dumping her on someone's lap. A damp cloth, strong-smelling - _chloroform? who the hell uses chloroform these days?_ \- was shoved over her nose and mouth; she tried to hold her breath, but someone hit her in the stomach and she gasped involuntarily. 

She heard someone say 'Get moving', and the car's engine starting before she passed out.

#### T.R.'s Bar & Grill, 6:30PM CDT

Claire scanned the bar and spotted David, then made her way through the crowd to his table. They ordered quickly, dry stout, fish sandwich and fries for David, brown ale, cheeseburger and fries for her, and David handed her a flash drive.

"How was business?" She tucked the drive into the inner pocket of her coat.

"Academic politics and confused students may scuttle it."

"That is a terrible combination."

"Quite. Yours?"

"Equipment and inventory check all day." It had been a mild relief from recruit training until she found all the unreported problems with gear and the expired or used material in the medical kits. "I could kill these idiots for not maintaining and reporting in their gear properly. Don't let me get started. Seen John lately?"

He shook his head. "He's out on assignment. Seen Leon?"

"Not recently. He was supposed to call today." He hadn't been able to get assigned to the extradition, or where she was being sent on her return to the States, but Hunnigan had called in a few favors to keep an eye on developments. "Frankly, I'm worried."

"So am I. There's a lot of pressure to keep this quiet."

Which might be why she hadn't heard from Leon yet. "Just what we needed." Classified mission, ass-covering, another fucking conspiracy: it would help if any of them were mutually exclusive.

The food arrived and they changed the subject to a recent police event David had attended; he wasn't hopeful of it producing useful results. There had been too much emphasis on overpowered weaponry and direct combat, all the things that looked great on video and sold a lot of expensive gear. Community outreach, community policing, and detective work to find out before something happened wasn't flashy enough for video and didn't sell anything.

"Chris has that problem with some of his recruits: they think it's a movie, they get pissed off about guard duty around a quarantine zone, house-to-house searches, all that, and if he can't knock sense into them, they're out on their asses." HQ occasionally got snippy about his pass/fail rate, but his trainees had the highest survival rate. 

"How often does he succeed?"

She was about to answer when her cell pinged with a text from Leon. _We lost her._ She showed David the message; his mouth tightened and he pulled out his own cell. She texted back, _Explain._

_Removed by unknown parties this morning. Short on details._

She knocked back the last of her ale and ordered another. _Unknown who or who's paying?_

_Both. On my way there._

The trail was cold as hell by now, not that Leon needed reminding. _Keep me posted._ David was talking with tightly controlled intensity, his crisp accent sliding back into Cumbrian and his free hand tense on his glass.

_Will do._

She stared at her mostly-empty plate, not really seeing it. Who could kidnap Rebecca right out of jail, that meant money for corruption and bribery, what organization would have been in Vancouver? Anybody that wanted a chance at her, she'd been there for years, everybody knew she was there. She looked up as David put away his phone.

"Anything?"

"She's been missing for approximately twelve hours. She was taken by men posing as federal agents hours before the scheduled extradition."

"And the guards are all pretending they don't know a damned thing."

David nodded, carefully releasing his hold on his glass and flexing a stiff hand. "STARS was informed hours later and immediately sent an investigative team. Vancouver PD is refusing all responsibility." He wasn't really looking at her, wasn't looking at anything, and his voice was dull and bleak.

Her burger felt like lead in her stomach, the ale like acid, because they both knew it was already too late. Rebecca was a major target, had been for years, and her body might already have been dumped somewhere, unless some asshole decided to make her murder a public event. "You sure you don't want to borrow the spare room?"

He shook his head. "I'd rather not. I'll call if I have news."

"All right, I'll do the same."

She was home in half an hour, booting up the laptop and making calls. She left Chris a message telling him to call her ASAP, no matter what time it was. Carlos had sent her everything he'd sent or intended to send Rebecca, and responded with multi-lingual profanity to the news and a bitter question of what the hell they could do now. She didn't have an answer, and Carlos didn't really expect one. Barry's reaction was more restrained but no less angry.

David's flash drive had STARS investigative reports on Coen and Rebecca, which would have been useful two days ago. He'd been convicted of murdering twenty-three civilians on a mission in Congo, which had originally been reported - it wasn't clear whether it was to military authorities or not - as executed enemy fighters, which would have caused enough problems. An NGO - she knew of them, they'd merged with another group several years ago - had blown the whistle and there'd been a minor firestorm, and the story had shifted to that Coen had panicked under pressure and murdered them. The STARS investigators noted stonewalling on the part of the Marines: they hadn't gotten access to trial records, Coen's military record, his surviving squad members, or anyone who'd been serving at Dunnell at the time. The incident had been in 1997, he'd been sentenced to death in 1998, and he'd been on his way to Ragithon to be executed when he and his military escort had disappeared, at which point Barry's recollection was pretty accurate. The provenance of the photos of Levitz/Coen hadn't been established, but the investigators suspected a recently fired Dr. Bascomb; apparently he was the doctor in the incident in the hotel, and had also aggressively misidentified a suspect in the Ottawa outbreak.

None of it mattered now. She turned a picture of herself and Rebecca face-down on the desk, dug a bottle of whiskey out of the cabinet and poured a glass. Another name to add to the list of people she'd failed.


	6. Chapter 6

### 16 September 2012

Someone roughly grabbed her right arm, checking her pulse, then let it fall; her hand smacked painfully into something hard and metal. Her head was shoved up, her eyes were forced open, and someone with stinking breath shone a light in them, then let go; her head slumped again without her willing it.

"Can't risk giving her any more." Male voice.

"Cuff her until transport's ready." Male voice again, different person.

Her arm was grabbed again, cold metal clinked around it, another clink nearby and her arm was dropped, hitting what was probably the same hard metal object again, the metal scraping her wrist. Two people walked out, a door slammed and locked, then silence. Raising her head made her dizzy, her mouth was dry and tasted bilious and metallic, her brain felt stuffed full of wool, and her whole body ached, especially around her mouth; there was a sore spot on her arm that felt like an injection site. Bright spots moved in her eyes, making the dizziness worse, and she closed her eyes, trying to get her bearings. She was sitting on a bench, her free hand moving over rough wood and flaking paint, her feet dangling a few inches off the floor. The air smelled a bit stale and dusty, as if this room wasn't used much. She felt herself sliding and struggled upright, aware she'd dozed off again. The bright spots had faded and she carefully opened her eyes. 

It was dark, the window at the far end both covered with a battered vinyl blind and blocked by something; the faint white light that made it through glinted off bits of glass or metal around her and hinted at shapes. Most of them were big, she'd been handcuffed to an old desk, she'd probably been dumped in a storeroom for old furniture. Engine noises outside, heavy vehicles, something she couldn't immediately identify. Big, winding down - airplane. Only one, maybe a small airfield. She didn't know what day it was, how long she'd been drugged. They didn't want her dead or in a coma, which was good in the short-term but probably meant someone had plans for her, and that was definitely not good. That kind of plan usually involved crazed T-virus experimentation or torture or both. She considered ransom, but STARS had an anti-ransom policy in general, and she wasn't sure extraction policies applied to personnel kidnapped out of jail. She was an embarrassment - no, Palmieri wouldn't play that game. They'd be searching for her, or at least for her corpse, they might think she was dead already, most logical thing really except that she was obviously wasn't, and that brought her back to someone with plans.

She scrabbled at the bench when she started to slide because she'd dozed off again. There were voices outside, angry, and then a key in the lock; she slumped against the bench and tried to look asleep. It wasn't much of an act, she could feel herself starting to doze anyway.

"She moved."

"It's been a couple hours, she's probably starting to come around."

"Give her another shot?"

"Better let it wear off more. How long?"

"Another fucking hour."

"Boss is going to be pissed as hell."

They left again, closing and locking the door behind them; she heard them talking as they walked away. She banged her hand into the desk, trying to wake up and keep awake. An hour before they loaded her onto a plane to - where? This sounded like a smaller airfield, so probably a relatively short flight from here, and then - another flight, whoever the boss was? No way to tell. She slid off the bench, her feet thumping onto the floor, and tried to stand, immediately clutching at the desk as her head spun; she couldn't even stand up completely because the cuffs had been locked around the leg of the desk, just below the top and drawers. Once the world settled down, she checked the desk; the drawers she could open were empty of everything but dust. The top was covered with boxes of junk - miscellaneous nails, screws, bolts and washers, broken bits of sharp-edged metal, bits of wood - all stuff somebody probably thought would eventually be good for something or other, all hell to pick through one handed and left-handed at that. She found a few potentially-useful bits and sat heavily on the bench on again. It was hard to focus, hard to make her hands do anything that delicate, and twice she dropped the bits she was working with.

The third time, she popped the cuffs open. She flexed her stiff, tense hand and arm, then pushed herself to her feet, clinging to the desk when she got dizzy again. This was not going to be a fast, easy escape. She made her way to the door somewhat unsteadily. Not a key lock on this side, just a handle to turn, they hadn't expected her to wake up or to get loose so they hadn't bothered with real security. She bumped into something, struggled to keep it from falling, metal, round, a piece of pipe or something. A corridor, unmarked and boring.

Boring until two men turned the left-hand corner. The guys who'd taken her from the jail, they'd dumped the cheap suits for black fatigues and boots, still carrying weapons. They didn't bother talking, just advanced on her, moving to flank her. She grabbed the pipe, held it like a baseball bat and got out of the room into the corridor, not interested in getting trapped in there. They didn't go for the weapons, probably figured they wouldn't need them. She was afraid they were right, she was still unsteady on her feet. Maybe she could use that. She let herself stumble, saw them relax a bit, not enough, not overconfident. She let them get a little closer, then shoved forward and swung the pipe at the closer one's knees.

He jumped back and she only caught him on the edge, enough to make him stagger, but not enough to take him down. She whipped the pipe up and caught the other one's arm with an audible crack. He swore vehemently and backed off, holding his arm; she hoped she'd broken it but doubted she'd managed it. They weren't relaxed now, still not going for weapons, maybe they got a bonus for bringing her in alive. The one wasn't moving yet, still swearing softly. The other was moving in on her, clearly planning to disarm her. She feinted right, dodged left, and tried to smash his arm with the pipe. He spun around fast and grabbed the pipe, trying to wrench it out of her hands. She held on, braced her feet, then slammed the pipe forward, smashing it into his chest before he realized what she was doing, knocked him off balance enough to fall. He didn't let go of the pipe immediately, dragged her down with him. She got the pipe free and smashed it into his knees, rewarded by a howl of pain. 

The other one barreled into her, knocking her flat. She kept the pipe, shoved it up between them and tried to push him away with it. He tore it out of her grip and flung it aside, she kneed him in the solar plexus and shoved him off her. He recovered faster, grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into the wall with one hand, then punched her in the jaw with the other. The world spun and wavered, starting to go dark, and he hit her again. She started to slide down the wall, only held up by his grip. She heard him call out to the other guy, couldn't quite make out the words, heard him answer by a grunt of pain. Distracted, his grip loosened and she slid a little more. He kept talking, the other guy not quite answering.

She brought her not-very-cooperative hands up, slowly and carefully, toward his weapon. He was still distracted, good, she'd gotten her hands on it when the other guy croaked a warning. She pulled it, fumbling with the safety and aiming even while he was moving.

The shot sounded very loud. He let go of her, clutching his stomach, blood soaking his fatigues, then collapsed. The other guy shoved himself up, trying to get to his gun. She aimed at him, standing slowly, hearing someone come up behind her. She couldn't handle anyone else, the guy on the floor didn't look reassured either.

"Don't move." A very familiar voice. She risked a cautious look back and saw Billy in a shooter's stance, aiming at the guy on the floor. "I got him, come on."

She moved back to him, carefully, listening for anyone else to come running. He jerked his head and they both moved back, around the corner.

"Nice work. Come on, somebody's going to be here fast." He slung her arm over his shoulder and helped her down the hall, faster than she could manage, out a side door into a parking lot. It was dark, just past sunset, the wind was pleasantly cool and smelled of asphalt and fuel. Billy helped her into the passenger side of a sleek gray car, then went round, slung himself into the driver's seat and started the car. They drove around the lot, out an unmanned gate, and down a dark, narrow road.

"Billy, how did you get here? Why - "

"You know a guy who calls himself Trent?"

#### 15 September 2012

Billy folded up the paper and dropped it on the diner table. Rebecca was missing, his name hadn't hit the papers yet but not for long, and there was fuck-all he could do about it. He was out of work, about out of money, and figured the best he could do was haul ass out of here and hope the Marines hadn't picked up his trail. It wasn't much of a prospect.

"Mr. Levitz."

Guy was maybe fifteen, twenty years older than he was, ordinary-looking, short graying brown hair, glasses, suit and briefcase. "Who're you?"

"The name is Trent. I have a job for you, if you're interested." 

Probably not any kind of job he was interested in, and he started to say so. The guy took a seat and slid a manila folder across; the picture that slid out of the envelope was him in the hotel parking lot, at his car. The angle was weird, maybe a long lens on the camera. He flipped the folder open, finding more photos, a summary of his case annotated with surprising skepticism and a note demanding to know who the fuck got to Chambers, and someone else's crazy-ass file on Rebecca, right down to medical reports, with a note at the end stating that transfer to Base Javier had been arranged for the next day. Trent ordered coffee and pancakes with fried eggs while he read.

"Where's this Javier?" Spanish name, not that that meant much.

"Out of the country." Trent neatly cut up his stack of pancakes. "There's been a rather lengthy delay."

He was pretty damn sure who'd arranged that. "Convenient."

"Still time-sensitive, however." 

Billy took a long drink of his own coffee, thinking. Trent wasn't a Marine, he'd bet money never been military at all, so not likely to be STARS or BSAA either. Didn't look like a fed. "I can see that." Who the hell was this bastard and where did he get his info? Dangerous any way he looked at it. "How fast?"

"Immediate employment." Something about the precise movements, the flicker in the eye - Trent was furious about something, and Billy didn't think it had anything to do with him. 

"Hell of a drive though." Rebecca might be in deeper shit than he was; the Marines might beat the shit out of him before they executed him, but they weren't likely to use him as a test subject.

"Transportation will be arranged as needed."

The last thing in the file was a map to an airfield and an envelope full of euros. He gave Trent a sharp look and the man nodded slightly. "Fine, I'll take the job."

\-----

Trent again. Rebecca's stomach twisted itself into knots. "Yeah, I know him. He's been - involved - since the Umbrella days."

"Trust him?"

With Trent, the question was always trust him for what and how far. She told him about Caliban Cove and the Utah facility instead, the way Trent had never given them all the information they needed, about Jill before the mansion and Carlos in Raccoon City, without names. Not that any of the ex-STARS were really secret. "Babbling, sorry. They kept me drugged. What day is it?"

"Sixteenth. Anything I need to look out for?"

Three days? She was surprised she was this functional. "Heartrate, breathing rate, balance problems." No nausea, dozy and easily distracted, thoughts wandering. Not excessively hungry or thirsty. No injuries beyond the bruise on her face and the ones developing from the fight, a sore injection site - no signs of T-Virus or T-Veronica infection, no signs of an IV. Probably some kind of sedative, maybe a cocktail with something else, tranquilizer maybe - 

"You listening to me?"

She shook herself. "Sorry. Oh - Billy, thanks. I couldn't drive like this."

"You were - drive? Planning to steal a car?"

Claire had taught her how to hotwire a car in Norway, but she probably couldn't do it drugged and in the dark. "Hadn't gotten that far."

"Miss Law-and-Order." Billy grinned.

"Shut up." She found herself grinning back. "Are we going anywhere?"

"Different airfield. Trent said he'd get us out of the country."

It was probably safer that way, Trent had resources they couldn't hope to match. Billy told her there were files and a penlight in the glove compartment. She could only skim, but there was information in the files that wasn't supposed to have left STARS; she clicked off the light and closed the folder with a muttered curse. Not again. Maybe Chris was right and STARS shouldn't have been rebuilt at all. They'd reached the airfield; Billy parked quickly and they headed into the one building.

Trent was sitting in the waiting area, sipping coffee, a briefcase on the floor next to him and a large manila envelope on top of it. He'd aged quite a bit in ten years - his hair was mostly gray, his face lined at the mouth and the eyes, and his features sharper; his clothes seemed slightly loose as well. Older than she'd thought or sick, maybe both.

"Mr. Levitz. I'm glad to see you well, Dr. Chambers."

"Likewise." She wasn't sure either of them meant it. "What happened?"

"I'm afraid it would take too long to explain. It was a well-executed opportunistic attack, Doctor, and you should be well out of the country before they regroup." He handed her the manila envelope and picked up his briefcase. "Your flight will be leaving shortly."

"Rather know where I'm going first."

They were going to Madeira, at least temporarily, which was a problem because neither of them spoke Portuguese. On the other hand, they didn't have much choice: Billy didn't have much money and she didn't have access to hers. Her debit card, her cellphone, everything had been confiscated when she'd been arrested, and trying to get at it would only reveal her location anyway. There was what felt like keys in the envelope, maybe they wouldn't be scrambling for housing. He hurried them out to a small plane.

"Why are you doing this?"

Trent gave her a sharp, measuring look, enough to make her wish she hadn't asked. "Your work is valuable, Dr. Chambers. I advise you and Mr. Levitz to be cautious for the next few months."

"Months?" Billy gave him a sharp look.

"What about Claire?" She wouldn't need new antivirals immediately, but no one in the lab had made them, no one knew about Ste. Selene, everything was encrypted on a locked-down, offline laptop. Ross was good, but maybe not good enough to reverse-engineer them if he couldn't get at the data.

"I have no desire to see Miss Redfield harmed." She wasn't sure what to make of Trent's voice or expression. "Your plane is about to leave, Doctor, Mr. Levitz."

The plane was too small for a straight flight, probably one of a multi-hop to the east coast, but it had a box full of cold sandwiches, chips and water. Neither of them spoke until they were in the air. 

"Thinking this wasn't such a great idea." Billy picked up a sandwich and a bottle of water. "What freaked you out?"

She picked up a sandwich - ham and swiss with lettuce, tomato and onions, on thick bread - and stared at it blankly for a moment. "He's never been this - involved - before. He always gave us info - not always in person, even - and disappeared." She picked up a bottle of water and a bag of ships. "The closest - when we came out of hiding, back when Umbrella imploded, somebody'd paid off my student loans." And Claire's. They'd been worried - vaguely, behind issues of whether the whole thing was a trick, whether they were going to jail, or just disappear and die and everything being completely pointless - about defaulting and credit damage, and it had been something good in the whole mess.

"What's he up to?"

"I wish I knew. Have you ever been to Madeira?"

Billy shook his head. "Nah. Spent a couple years in Germany."

She'd been to Berlin for a conference and had managed to eke out a little vacation time to see more of the country than her hotel and the conference center. Billy'd been in the southern part of the country, not around Berlin. It gave them something to talk about, anyway, although she only realized she'd fallen asleep again when Billy shook her awake before they landed. They had two more hops to go.


	7. Chapter 7

### 26 September 2012

Claire filled her travel mug with coffee, mostly ignoring the TV. Chris and Jill already knew the non-news about Rebecca; the only new thing was that one of the guys who'd taken her had died of a gunshot wound to the gut in a hospital, without giving any coherent testimony. There hadn't been any evidence in her condo, on her phone or her laptop that she'd been in any kind of contact with Coen before or after the Toronto incident. He'd disappeared within a week of the Toronto incident.

"What about this Ross guy?" Chris demanded, grabbing his breakfast sandwich from the microwave.

"Rebecca's assistant director," Jill reminded him; she was much better at mornings than either Redfield and had already had her first coffee and breakfast. "Now acting director."

"He's pissed off." Claire couldn't much blame him; she and Rebecca had been hiding that she'd been deliberately infected, and that the infection was possbly latent, for years. "Sounds like STARS HQ talked to him. He's deciphering Rebecca's notes." She'd only been able to follow the basics of Rebecca's explanations and couldn't help. Rebecca'd given him the first part of Carlos' information before she'd been arrested; she'd passed on the rest of it to him and given all of it to Jill.

Chris grumbled and changed the subject. "You hear about Rockfort?"

"New owners? Yeah. Got anything?" She closed up her mug and let Chris at the coffeepot; she'd already had an orange and an energy bar, which was all she could face first thing in the morning. Her hair was already trying to slip down; she set down her coffee and pinned it back up. Maybe she should have stuck with the ponytail, but it wasn't particularly professional. She brushed off her blazer.

Jill shook her head. "All shell, no peanut so far." Rockfort Island had gone to a cousin of some sort - Claire hadn't tracked down the records and wasn't sure what country to search - who had lost it to back taxes; it had been sold at auction to someone hiding behind a multitude of shell companies. "Can't get authorization to get out there until I find something. I've asked Quint to check for activity."

Chris filled his travel mug and devoured his sandwich in three bites, then drank half the mug at once.

Claire grimaced. "That creep."

"He's very good at his job. And that was two years ago."

Cetcham had drunkenly hit on Sherry at Chris and Jill's Christmas party, Claire had promptly offered to break his nose, and he had fled to the other side of the room. "He's still a creep." The BSAA personnel at the party had thought it was hilarious. "Heard from Carlos lately?"

"He was trying to get leave to come up, but I think it fell through. Leon?"

"Shipped off, couldn't say where." There were enough trouble spots she knew about, much less the ones she didn't; Hunnigan would find a way to let her know if anything happened. She checked her briefcase - laptop, tablet, brochures, flash drives with the media files for her talk; she'd double-checked the drives before she left home to make sure she had the right ones, and that everything worked last night.

Chris refilled his mug and slapped the lid on. "Ready to go?"

She grabbed her briefcase and climbed into Chris' Jeep; Jill claimed not to be interested in listening to them squabble and took her own car. Chris backed out of the drive and headed for BSAA HQ.

"Who am I speaking to?"

"Latest batch of recruits, some of the experienced ones who haven't had much to do with TerraSave. Sorry, I know you needed some time off."

"Don't worry about it." She meant it; it was better than trying not to think about Raccoon City. "I've got the usual about how our search-and-rescue operations work, cooperation with BSAA and STARS, Q&A afterward. Anything else?" She had some other presentations, or she could do some off-the-cuff talking, depending on what came up in the Q&A.

"Give 'em an actual mission." The Jeep turned a corner, not the way they'd gone last time. Chris didn't like taking the same route every day. "You know how some of these guys get, think no one else ever gets their hands dirty."

"They don't know the half of it." Chris had shadowed her once, when they'd been on the same site in Oregon, through several brutal days of digging through damaged buildings, extricating survivors and getting them emergency medical help, food and shelter, marking corpses and shooting a few trapped zombies. The zombies had been buried so deeply it wasn't surprising BSAA had missed them. "So what did Jill think we were going to argue about?"

"Jill thinks we always argue."

"She knows better. Did you find something in the TriCell files? And watch for that speed trap up ahead."

Chris slowed down before he hit the radar. TriCell had an extensive, detailed file on TerraSave and its internal operations, enough that Chris thought they'd had a mole, and he'd been hearing enough odd rumors and potential leaks that he thought the mole was still operative and working for someone else.

"No, you're not trying to put someone from the BSAA in TerraSave to dig them out."

"I was thinking Luciani. Good guy, gets along with people, experienced - "

"No, Chris. Not even Parker." She folded her arms across her chest, scanning the road; traffic was lighter than she'd expected this morning. "You aren't putting anyone in TerraSave. Period, full stop, _no_. Give me that file and whatever they've got on me tonight, and I'll figure out what to do about it."

"Parker? You're on a first name basis with him already?" Chris flashed her a suspicious look and turned onto a much busier road.

"No agents, not even Parker, and you're giving me those files tonight."

Chris shook his head. "Claire, you fight monsters better than people. These guys are dangerous."

Umbrella had been dangerous and at least as homicidal. She dropped it for now, this close to BSAA HQ, and switched back to her presentation. She'd done these several times before by now, trying to improve communication and cooperation, and had even gotten Chris to do a couple presentations to her people. She suggested doing another one sometime in the new year since her new recruits wouldn't have heard the last one, and Chris agreed to plan one; he wasn't nearly as comfortable doing public speaking as she was. Jill caught up to them outside HQ, chatting for a minute before heading up to her own office. Chris took her down to the training area, a gym, shooting range and a warren of classrooms with a larger lecture hall where she'd be speaking. There was a loud rumble of conversation that stumbled, dropped and then rose again once they turned the corner. There were a couple dozen BSAA agents, mostly young - well, around Moira's age, older than she'd been in Raccoon City or Rockfort or other places - and male, milling around, with another young agent trying to keep order. Nivans, right, she'd met him last year - he'd been embarassed about the good things Chris said about him.

"Nivans, get these people in order. Where's Macauley?"

"Here, sir." A young agent came to the door of the lecture hall and kind of froze wide-eyed when he saw her, then snapped to attention. "Everything's set up, sir. M-ma'am, I'm to help you with the media equipment."

"Good, let's get started. Chris, give me a couple minutes to set up."

Macauley got her laptop hooked up and ready; she tested her presentation files quickly, set everything to the beginning, and checked the mic, then sent him out. The BSAA crowd filed into the room in reasonably good order, seated themselves and quieted down. Chris took a seat up front near her where he could keep an eye on them.

"I'm Claire Redfield, director of TerraSave's search-and-rescue operations. Some of you might have met us already, the rest of you probably will soon." And with that she was off, starting with a brief description of a standard search-and-rescue team, their usual setup of a base with temporary shelters and medical hut until the wounded could be evacuated, and how search teams communicated with base as they worked. She used the attack in Oregon as the example, from the moment TerraSave touched down to handing over the site to the next NGOs. Her audience went from mildly scornful to interested and even impressed by the end.

"Questions?"

"What's the chain-of-command? Besides you, ma'am. Who do we talk to if there's a problem in the field?"

"Team leader. If it can't be resolved there, whoever's running base. If zombies or BOWs get loose from a previously enclosed location, notify base immediately so they can warn our team."

"How long do you spend on-site?"

"It depends on the size of the outbreak and the area we need to search; anywhere from forty-eight hours to a week or more."

Most of the questions were about handling BOWs and infected, why they didn't work with a particular organization (their national office was a fucking disaster more interested in donations and publicity than actual work), and handling civilians and quarantine. She was about to answer a question about animals - a lot of people refused to be evacuated without their pets - when their radios went off.

"Sorry, Claire. We're being deployed. Head up to Jill's office, she'll fill you in."

"Got it." She wanted to tell him to be careful, but not in front of his soldiers.

Chris punched her lightly in the shoulder and headed out, followed by most of the soldiers. Macauley stayed behind long enough to help disconnect her laptop and shut down the system. 

"Thank you for speaking to us, ma'am."

Before she said anything, Nivans poked his head back in and shouted, "Move your ass, Macauley - uh, sorry, ma'am."

Claire waved it off and Macauley hurried off with Nivans. She headed upstairs to find Jill.

\-----

#### Calheta, Madeira, Portugal

Rebecca leaned back in her chair and watched people pass by the café as she finished her coffee; her pastry had already been reduced to a smear of crumbs. They didn't really need anything in town, probably shouldn't be spending money, they'd blown a chunk of the cash Trent had given them in Funchal on clothes, necessities and a new haircut and dye job for Rebecca, and they didn't know when or if they'd get more, but they'd both wanted out for a while. She'd regret it later but she didn't care right now.

"Better get going if we want to get anything before we head back." Billy tapped her arm and flicked a glance at a table in the corner, two women, tourists maybe. The younger one was Hispanic, late thirties or early forties, military or ex-military, no-nonsense short haircut; the older was maybe American, pushing fifty, longer dark hair heavily grayed.

She nodded. "Yeah, let's go."

Billy'd already paid their tab and they headed out. "You know those two?"

"No." Damn, that was fast - bad luck. Or maybe they were overthinking and it was a coincidence. "You?"

He shook his head. "They gave you the once-over when they came in, then seemed to ignore you."

Probably not a coincidence. "Hope they thought I was someone else."

Nobody had followed them out of the cafe. They went on after a brief deliberation, picking up coffee, bread and cheese, the catch of the day and some vegetables for dinner. Billy'd managed to pick up some useful phrases in Portuguese from the guidebook Trent had left and did most of the talking. Rebecca could barely manage hello and goodbye; Claire had always been better at languages. They started to walk back to Trent's house, almost two miles from the center of town; the streets here were narrow and winding.

"Looks like it's done raining. Is it my turn to cook?" It had been raining - off and on light sprinkles- all day, but it was starting to clear up. She glanced across the road and saw the two women from the café again, heading the opposite direction, and tapped Billy's arm. He nodded, he'd seen them too.

"Nah, I'll fire up the grill when we get there."

Maybe they should have taken a taxi instead. Rebecca resisted the urge to look over her shoulder as they kept walking. They made it back to the house - a small, old stone house off a narrow path, with an overgrown garden Rebecca had been patiently clearing and a terrace with an impressive brick barbecue in the back. Hard to imagine Trent grilling anything, or gardening; they'd probably been left by whoever'd owned the house before. No noise, no one apparently following them, no sign of intrusion. Inside looked calm and normal; they checked the place thoroughly before they put away the groceries. It was like heading back to a safehouse back in the Umbrella days, or the first few months she'd lived with Claire after they'd come out of hiding.

Billy went out to fire up the grill. Rebecca tossed together a salad and sliced bread and cheese, took that and plates outside, then collected the laptop. Trent unsurprisingly had excellent internet and a well-secured WiFi network.

"So who were those two?"

"No idea. Not STARS, we - they - don't have a presence outside the US and Canada." She booted up the laptop. "Probably not BSAA, they don't send their scientists on field jobs."

"What scientist?" Billy laid the fish on the grill.

Rebecca reconsidered. "The older woman. I can't tell if I've seen her before or if she reminds me of someone. The younger one - maybe BSAA, but I don't think so. Military or ex-military."

"Not Marines."

"That leaves a lot of lousy options." She opened the browser to her usual searches, on herself, Billy and bioterrorism. "If we're really lucky, they're looking for someone else, or they're military."

"And if we're not, they're bioterrorists?" 

"Yeah." Conspiracy theorists were going nuts over her, STARS was issuing the same statement about actively searching for her, there was an internal investigation in Vancouver, and her sister was still refusing all comment on behalf of the family. There was a new article from one of the alternative news sites, supposedly a profile of Billy. She opened that in a new tab and scanned the rest of the new links; the Marines were still issuing the same non-statement, Congo was blaming the whole disaster on illegal and unwanted American intervention, and there was a political dispute over whose fault it was he'd gotten over the Canadian border in the first place. She switched to the bioterrorism tab. "Shit."

"What?" Billy flipped the fish.

"New bioterror attack. College campus in upstate New York." She reached for her phone and remembered that she was on the run, that even if she wasn't she didn't have a lab, a staff. Even if she had, the US lab was a hell of a lot closer than Vancouver. She opened links to the more reliable news sites, recognized the college name - Claire had gone there her freshman year, spent a month there as a sophomore before Raccoon City blew up. BSAA was on-site and quarantine had already been established. "Must have started a few hours ago." She switched to Billy's alleged profile. It was surprisingly in-depth and had quotes from his parents and siblings and Marines who'd known - allegedly, anyway. "There's a new profile of you."

"Yeah? They get my good side?"

Rebecca rolled her eyes at his back. "Is your good side the one that got thrown out of a German bar?"

Billy turned enough to shoot her a very suspicious look. "Just because you never had any fun . . ."

"I have definitely never been thrown out of a German bar. Or been confined to quarters for streaking while drunk." She believed that one; Billy usually walked around shirtless and barefoot as it was.

"You just wish you'd seen it, princess."

Billy looked damn good shirtless, forty or not. "You think I haven't seen better?"

He smirked. "I know you never saw better."

"You keep telling yourself that." She gave him a bland smile and changed the subject. "They claim they interviewed your family, too."

Billy's shoulders stiffened, and his face set before he turned back to the grill. "Leave it open, I'll look at it later."

She switched back to the other tab. No BOWs reported, or the information hadn't leaked, BSAA and STARS had established a quarantine zone and kept the outbreak from spreading. She could - before, she would have had people call her with information, had people to call for information, been able to find out - within a few days, at least - what was going on. Even if she could figure out what was going on, there was nothing she could do, without a staff, a lab, STARS backing. 

She closed the laptop and got a glass of water; Billy pulled the fish from the grill and popped open a soda. They didn't have the money to get off the island, probably wouldn't have even if they'd kept all the cash Trent had given them, given that Rebecca had no ID at all and Billy's was fake and probably on a watchlist. Afterward, she went to the railing and leaned on it, looking out to sea; STARS did not pay nearly enough for an ocean-view apartment, much less a condo, in Vancouver, and she rarely got out to the water. Madeira's dramatic geography was nothing like Vancouver's, anyway. Billy joined her after a while.

"Profile's real."

"Yeah?"

"Everything checks out." He wasn't looking at her, body turned inward in a textbook 'this is emotional and I'm not talking about it' signal. "Think there's some news on that attack you were talking about. Probably bullshit, something about flaming blood."

"Flaming blood?" Rebecca left him to think. There was an article with an alleged video from someone's smartphone, the upper floor of some building lit by fire, behind a girl with slashed-up arms at the head of the stairs. The girl was laughing, the kind of hysterical laughter of someone who'd gone over from shock and stress, and flinging blood down the stairs. The blood burst into flames as it fell, burning the infected climbing the stairs. Billy came back to look over her shoulder.

"That's gotta be fake."

Carlos' information had been right. "It's real." Someone had T-Veronica. Possibly multiple someones, if the Brazil incidents and this were unrelated.

"How the hell is that real? Why the hell isn't she bursting into flames if her blood's flammable?" Billy pulled around the other chair and dropped into it.

She shook her head. "I don't know. We've never had a sample of T-Veronica to test to figure how it creates the effects it does." The video cut out as something big came up the stairs - outline wasn't anything familiar, either the angle was wrong or someone had mutated into something unexpected - considering what little she knew about T-Veronica, anything might be expected.

"Hold up. If you don't have T-Virus, where's the vaccine come from?"

"We have T-Virus, not T-Veronica." That had cleared up absolutely nothing, and she frowned, thinking through classified and unclassified. "T-Virus itself was created from a wild virus found in Africa. Multiple researchers worked on it, editing different parts of it for different purposes - making it more aggressively infectious in different species, attempting to control its effects on neurotransmitters, enhancing its mutagenic properties - " Billy's eyes were starting to glaze over - "basically making a lot of different strains of T-Virus. Sometime in the early 80s, some of these types became sufficiently distinct from basic T-Virus to get their own name." Birkin's G-Virus, Ashford's T-Veronica.

"Different strains? Like the damn flu vaccine that never fucking works?"

"Yeah, pretty much." Billy nodded and she went on. "The original developer of T-Veronica and her lab were blown up, and we - STARS - had no samples to figure out how it does what it does." The lab in Ste. Selene had been destroyed along with Veronique Ashford. "Obviously someone does."

She checked the news for more videos and more reports, finding multiple references that weren't clear on how many incidents like that there had actually been; it could have been one incident constantly reported. If she'd - she didn't have contacts, she didn't have access, and she was never going to know what happened. Billy cleaned the grill while she cleared the table, and they washed up the dishes. She went back outside afterward, looking out to sea until the chill set in.

\-----

#### 29 September 2012

The stench was horrific: rot and burned flesh, shit, piss and blood, scorched plastic, burned wood and carpet and smoke. Doors had been broken or torn off their hinges, the floor littered with shredded paper and books, smashed laptops and broken phones, dried blood in smears, splashes and streaks everywhere. Thick clouds of flies rose up from dismembered bits of bodies everywhere, the buzzing the only noise. No infected, no survivors. 

The second floor was blood and smoke and less destruction, a classroom with a barricaded door that turned out to have three dead students huddled in a corner, and two more dead students and a professor in another. Streaks and pools and mutant footprints in blood led to the stairs up, bodies burned black and contorted like abstract sculptures, surrounding a huge corpse with too many joints in its clawed, too-long limbs. Everything was charred, the carpet burned off and the walls higher up stained with smoke. Claire peered up, frowning at the faint buzzing noise; not the flies, different pitch, much fainter, fading in and out.

"Careful." She picked her way through the charred corpses, testing every stair. The buzzing was fading in and out, weakening, and she could just see a single body at the top of the stairs, half-hidden behind a stack of charred chairs. No sign of bugs, no tracks in the smoke stains on the walls. To the right, an only slightly burned door with some burned furniture in front of it. She racked her brain, trying to remember - storage up there, good place to hide. She moved cautiously closer, signaling for her team to wait. 

A girl, brown-skinned, probably a student, barefoot - no, there were melted shoe soles nearer the stairs. Her jeans were burned off below the knee, but her legs weren't burned at all. Her arms were covered with scars, her t-shirt charred and ragged, her short hair matted with blood, and a blood-stained x-acto knife lay near her left hand. Her hands twitched, her head turned from side to side, and her eyes blinked open. Claire tensed, hands tense on her weapon. The girl's hands scrabbled weakly at the floor and her mouth worked.

"Please." The voice was weak and hoarse. She turned her head. "Don't shoot."

"Can you tell me your name?"

"Jess. Who - "

"We're with TerraSave."

Jess tried to lift her hand and couldn't. "Others. Hiding."

"All right, we'll check it out." 

She signaled it was clear to her team and picked up the knife with a piece of plastic, dropping both in a decontamination bag. Rita Olmos, the medic, knelt down next to Jess and helped her to sit up and sip a little rehydration solution. The rest of the team moved up past them and cleared the door. Pedro banged on it twice and waited; no attack, no noise. He opened the door and shouted 'TerraSave!' inside, and this time there was a barely audible response from somewhere inside. Flashlights on, part of the team went in, the rest staying out to cover them.

Jess was confused, unsure what day it was or how long she'd been here, but she was looking at them, even if she didn't seem to be focusing properly, and reasonably coherent, understanding Rita's careful questions. As coherent as anyone would be being stuck in this hellhole three days. No decay, no mutations. She gave Rita her antivirals for Jess; Rebecca would be - Rebecca was gone and she'd have to hope Ross could duplicate them.

"You saw that video, right?" Rita's voice was very quiet as she prepped the first injection and wiped down the girl's arm with alcohol.

"Yeah. One problem at a time. Let's get her out of here and into quarantine."

Rita gave her the first injection. The girl looked at her scarred arms, then really looked at the stairs; her face turned ashen and she scrabbled at the floor trying to push herself away. Claire moved to block the view just as her team came from the storage room. Jess bit her lip and turned to look.

They brought half a dozen students out, four girls and three boys, stumbling on shaky legs, blinking heavily even in the relatively dim light here, leaning under the weight of their backpacks. They were dirty, their faces tear-stained, and she'd guess any number of bruises and minor injuries; one of the boys was limping a little in a way that said knee pain to her. But six - seven, with Jess - alive, when they'd only found two in two different buildings earlier today. Maybe today had been worth something after all. 

Jess' face lit up when she saw them, cracked lips managing a smile. One of the girls, brown hair dyed blue and green, cried out when she saw the other girl; she was carrying two packs until Pedro took one.

"Jess!" She would have run to her if she could, stumbled painfully over when Claire gave the okay. "Jess, god, I thought - "

"'Caela," Jess whispered. "Okay?"

"Yeah. I'm okay. We're okay."

Jess peered past her to the rest of the students, nodded, and passed out again. Pedro reported no major injuries and that one of the students needed insulin, and the team started them down the stairs.

Rita unrolled the portable stretcher while Claire called base. "Seven survivors. Six walking, one not, insulin required for one. Building clear."

"Recorded. Nice work, Claire." Gina's voice crackled over the radio. "You're off for the day, Gabe's on."

"Got it."

Jess muttered when they lifted her onto the stretcher, hands vaguely moving as if she wanted to push them away. Her scarred arms were hot enough to be painful to touch, the rest of her feverish when they strapped her to the stretcher. Two of the team came up and took the other sides of the stretcher as they carried her down the stairs, then ranged out once they reached the bottom floor. The students gasped and a few choked back sobs as they saw the carnage, huddling tightly together. Outside, they squinted and blinked in even the cloudy light, shuffling along without looking up, or around at the carnage. None of them were sure what day it was; they'd shut their phones off because they were afraid of attracting the monsters, and a couple had forgotten to charge them anyway, the batteries gone dead. Claire guessed they'd seen someone mobbed but didn't press it. 'Caela, Michaela, Jess's friend, kept close to her. Claire got her talking a little - she and Jess were both sophomores, she was majoring in history and Jess was probably doing environmental science but she wasn't sure yet. Two of the others were sophomores, the others freshmen.

She explained decontamination and quarantine along the way; everything that could be decontaminated would be and then would be returned, including phones. TerraSave kept some pay-as-you-go phones for these situations and they'd be allowed to use them until theirs were returned. BSAA was running quarantine security and antiviral treatment; TerraSave's medics were handling other medical issues. They did react, faces lightening, at the mention of food, showers and clean clothes; they'd had bottles of water and some snacks, but the snacks had run out and they'd almost run out of water too. 

Macauley was running quarantine and looked bored, brightening perceptibly when she remembered his name. Michaela took the spare pack from Pedro and dug Jess' phone out of it to get her family's contact information. Claire saw them passed safely through decontamination into quarantine.

"Ma'am, the Captain was looking for you earlier. Right now he's dealing with some looters, though."

"Thanks. Tell him I'll be at base if he still needs to talk to me."

"Will do, ma'am."

Three hours, decontamination and an all-too-short nap later, Claire was checking quarantine. Chris had warned that BSAA had intel on multiple potential threats, which had sparked a vehement dispute over evacuation; the DSO had used evacuation as a means of disappearing people before, and most of TerraSave was gunshy about letting anyone else run evacuation. Macauley was still on duty, supposed to be relieved soon, and Rita had just come out from checking on the patients. Jess was stable, surprisingly so under the circumstances, but still unconscious; her fever had disappeared with the use of Claire's antivirals, and standard treatment was continuing. The others of that group were in better shape, physically, their problems now shock and reaction rather than injury; the diabetic student's blood sugar was returning to normal. The rest of the patients - hardly more than a dozen - were in varying stages, mostly suffering from hunger, dehydration and relatively minor injuries; anyone with major injuries hadn't made it long enough for TerraSave to get there.

"Captain's working on more security, ma'am. Looters in sector two and STARS asked for assistance."

"Again?" She shook her head. "I'll send a few of - "

The west door opened behind her. She spun around to see four men - plain clothes, armed, weapons - ordinary 9mms - visible under their coats.

"You're not allowed in here, boys."

"DSO. We're taking over, already cleared it with the person in charge."

Claire moved in front of the door to quarantine proper, not quite going for her weapon yet. "Director Redfield here. I'm in charge and you haven't cleared shit. Stop where you are." 

Rita moved to back up Claire, Macauley moving in front to take point. Both of them were calling for backup over their radios. Seconds later, Gina's voice rang out over the intercom and radio, alerting everyone in earshot of the situation. The intruders swore and drew weapons. They drew theirs.

"We're in command here. Move aside." The speaker moved forward.

"Drop your weapons!" Macauley raised his weapon with the command.

The intruders opened fire. Rita screamed and went down, blood soaking her shirt, Macauley staggered, and Claire fell back a pace into the door. She raised her weapon and fired twice, Macauley shooting next to her. Two fell flat, one to his knees, the last one shot again just before the doors slammed open and the reinforcements arrived, Nivans in the lead on one side and Gabe on the other.

"Drop your weapons!"

They dropped their weapons and raised their hands. Claire reached for her radio as BSAA took the remaining intruders into custody. "Situation under control. Three intruders down, one standing in BSAA custody. Medics needed immediately at quarantine. " She knelt down - tried to kneel, her leg collapsed under her and she managed to retain enough dignity to catch herself with her hands before she fell on her face - next to Rita. The medic was in shock, pale and cold, shaking, blood soaking her shirt front and back. One of the other medics dropped down next to her.

"Redfield, I'll - did you not notice you were shot?"

Her left pant leg was shredded and soaked with blood. "No, actually." She shifted her weight to her good leg and pulled herself up. "They'll have heard the gunfire in quarantine."

"Get that looked at."

Macauley supported her to a chair. One of the other medics checked her leg and declared it a graze wound, then cleaned and bandaged it. One of the intruders was dead, two critically wounded, the third moderately wounded, but still in need of more treatment than they could provide. Rita had been lucky, the bullet had gone straight through, but still needed emergency surgery. Nivans agreed to help arrange the medevac and sent two men along as guards. She gave him a brief explanation of events while Macauley was treated; the bullet had gone clean through his outer arm and would need stitches. He was lucky it hadn't hit a major blood vessel.

"DSO? You think they were lying?"

"Probably. The DSO would have thrown their weight around more before they started shooting." Maybe, even the DSO sometimes just stomped in and went after something, especially if they didn't expect anyone to fight back. "Either way, we'll find out."


	8. Chapter 8

Claire slogged grimly through an emergency meal, trying to ignore the burning, stabbing pain in her leg; eating was about the last thing on her mind right now, but she'd regret it if she didn't. Her left arm had been faintly pink and hot for fifteen or twenty minutes after she'd been shot, just long enough she'd been trying to come up with explanations why she needed antivirals and how to contact Ross before the heat and color faded. Chris had come over as soon as soon as he'd been able to get free.

"We've got as much security on your quarantine as we can spare, but there's still active threats. We need to evacuate your patients to a more easily secured location. STARS is talking to their HQ about space there. Told 'em to talk directly to you once they had something solid."

Seventy miles wasn't unreasonable, but distance wasn't the only problem. "If it was Rebecca, I - " It wasn't going to be Rebecca, and she would have been in fucking Vancouver anyway. "I'll listen, but no promises."

Chris nodded reluctantly. "Yeah. You found more survivors?"

"Eleven between me and Gabe today. Nearly doubled the number of survivors. " He'd found two more hiding in a furnace room, minor injuries, terrified, hungry and dehydrated. "Macauley said you were having problems with looters?"

"Assholes tried to smuggle out bloody smartphones and laptops."

"Fucking idiots."

"Worse. Couple of the last batch cut themselves up breaking windows. They hit the rash stage right when we got them into quarantine."

Claire shook her head. "How are people still that stupid?"

His radio went off before he could answer. Ingrid Hunnigan and Agent Kennedy had just arrived and wanted to see both of them; that was remarkably fast work. She nodded at Chris and he told Nivans to bring her in; she called Gina over to warn her. Nivans escorted them in a few minutes later; Hunnigan looked frayed around the edges and clutched a thermos of coffee as if her life depended on it, with less of a death-grip on her briefcase. Leon had his own coffee and looked like he hadn't slept yet, possibly not in the last forty-eight hours, and was favoring his left arm and limping . Chris sent Nivans back to whatever he'd been doing; Gina went back to monitoring communications, waiting for word from the hospital.

"Have a seat. Ms. Hunnigan, thanks for coming up yourself. I know it's hard to get away from the office."

Hunnigan and Leon both sat down, Leon awkwardly enough he'd probably fucked up his knee again. "You're welcome, Director. It took some effort, but certain things are better handled face-to-face." She poured herself some coffee and took a drink. "I understand there were wounded?"

Rita was still in surgery, Macauley would recover. Chris scowled at her when she said she'd be fine; she glared briefly at him. Hunnigan coughed, took two files with photos from her briefcase, and asked about the intruders: one had died on-scene, one during the medevac, and one was still in surgery. The last wasn't talking.

"Thank you for sending the stills from your security system." She slid one photo across the table. "Do either of you recognize this man?"

Claire studied it. "That's one of them. The last one standing, I think."

"He applied to the DSO last year." Hunnigan took back the photo and took another drink of coffee. "He came well-recommended and there was a bit of ... political difficulty when I rejected him."

"Why did you reject him?" Chris leaned forward, curious.

She considered the question, though there probably wasn't much she could say. "He was off. I'm sure you know that perception."

Chris nodded; they'd both encountered plenty of that. It drove her co-workers and probably his superiors at BSAA up the wall, but more often than not they were right. "Yeah. Any information about what he was doing here?"

"Unfortunately not. I'd lost track of him after rejecting his application." She slid another photo across the table. "This one?"

"Think that's one of the ones that went down." She wasn't sure if it was one of the dead men or the one in surgery.

Hunnigan winced. "He's a former DSO agent. Let's just say he was living well beyond his salary." She slid the files across the table. "That's all the information I'm authorized to give you. I didn't recognize the other two."

Chris took the files. "More than we had before. Thanks."

Hunnigan wouldn't have flown up here for - it had to be that goddamned video. "What else?"

"There was an outbreak with similar characteristics a decade ago. DSO is interested in information-sharing and potentially offering protection to the witnesses."

"BSAA's always interested in information."

"Protection's off the table. We can talk about information." Carefully redacted information.

"What's your offer?"

DSO was offering a (probably redacted) report on a South American incident that Leon had apparently handled, and DSO's limited supply of information on the virus. In return, they wanted scene reports from TerraSave and BSAA for the outbreak and the attack, and for Leon to be able to interview the witnesses and survivors of both. Claire was about to remind them that quarantine was still in effect when Gina came over.

"Claire, Rita came through surgery and they're optimistic about a full recovery."

Claire leaned back, smiling, as a little of the tension drained out of her body. "Great news, Gina."

Chris clapped her on the shoulder while the others offered - perfectly genuine - relief at the news. She shifted the conversation back to quarantine; Leon agreed to interview witnesses and check the site until the survivors cleared quarantine. DSO was sending someone other than Hunnigan to question the surviving intruders; the faint clipping of her words and the tenseness of her hands said she was not happy about it, which probably meant no one else was going to be happy dealing with them. That was going to be on STARS and BSAA, not TerraSave, much as she'd like to demand some explanations. 

"As I'm sure you're aware, this incident has attracted a great deal of attention, the majority of it centered on the unidentified young woman in the video. As long as she remains unidentified, I suspect there will be more attacks on the survivors. DSO is willing to offer assistance."

"Ms. Hunnigan, the last time the DSO 'protected' someone, it took two governors, a senator and the better part of a year to get them out of 'protection." Hunnigan hadn't had anything to do with that, so Claire kept her tone even. "Thanks for the warning, but no." STARS HQ was looking like a better idea all the time; STARS didn't like the DSO any more than the BSAA did.

Hunnigan nodded, unperturbed. "I understand. I have a little more information for you - nothing, I'm afraid on Dr. Chambers. However." She frowned slightly before continuing. "We've received information about at least one potential new bioterrorist organization. Allegedly, they're deeply involved in the unstable political situation in Eastern Europe, possibly operating out of Russia. Unfortunately, Russia is currently uninterested in cooperative ventures."

"Heard something about Europe," Chris agreed. "How reliable's the information?"

Leon stirred and Hunningan shot him a look; he subsided. Had to be Wong.

"They've been reliable before. This new organization seems to be gathering information on you and the Director, Captain, though the source didn't specify what kind."

"Thanks for the warning." Chris stood up. "Come on, Kennedy, you can start with Macauley. Ms. Hunnigan, I'll send Nivans to walk you back to your copter."

Leon considered arguing, then shoved himself upright, grumbling, and said he'd be back to get Claire's report and whichever of her people were available. Chris propelled him out of the room; Hunnigan leaned on her fist, watching.

"They really don't get on, do they?"

"They're fine in the field."

"I'd hope so. Director, a word of warning. There's been more chatter than usual about TerraSave, and you in particular. Nothing specific, as yet, and all very vaguely sourced, but it's concerning."

Between Chris' claim of a mole, Wong's information and this, something was definitely up. She'd have to come up with some way to smoke out whatever, or whoever, it was. "Thanks, Ms. Hunnigan. I'll keep an eye out. "

\-----

His back was prickling right between the shoulder blades, and he kept seeing flickers of movement out of the corners of his eyes. It wasn't Congo, the stone water-channel - levada - nothing like it, the smell was different, but it was a closed-in narrow path surrounded by green and rustlings he couldn't identify.

"You all right?"

"I'm not that old."

"That's not the problem, is it?" Rebecca sounded seriously unimpressed.

"Most of the way there. Might as well keep going."

He could tell himself it wasn't Congo until he was blue in the face and it wouldn't change shit. He was damned glad to see the end of it open up into the town, the flickers at the edge of his vision fading out slowly. The prickling didn't, and he took a seat at the cafe where his back and Rebecca's were against a solid wall. Didn't do a damn thing; all he wanted was coffee and out. Rebecca picked up on it fast and quietly settled the bill.

He glanced up at a reflection - guy in a heavy jacket, not cold enough for that, his hand was sliding into the jacket - 

"Get down!" He grabbed Rebecca and dragged her under the table.

Gunfire and shattering glass, screaming. Billy counted eighteen shots - full mag, sounded like a 9mm - and then nothing for sixty seconds, and cautiously peered around the edge of the table. Guy was gone. He scanned the room carefully, most people still hiding under the tables. Broken glass everywhere, not as much blood as he expected, bullet holes ringing the room, running from their table to one on the opposite wall. Woman was looking out from under the other table the same way he was, about his age - the one from a few days ago.

Rebecca moved up next to him, blood streaking her exposed skin - no bullet wounds, just flying glass. His arms were scratched up, nothing serious, didn't feel like any glass in the wounds. "Clear," she said softly.

"Could be waiting."

She shook her head. "Probably in hiding, waiting for a second chance. Or someone else is."

He jerked his head toward the other table. The older woman was peering out from behind the other one, then both crawled out from under the table and headed for the door. "Better get out while we can."

Rebecca's mouth tightened, like she wanted to argue, he saw her look around - then her shoulders dropped. "Yeah."

They slipped through the door. Street was deserted, everyone'd probably run when the shooting started. They moved out, hurrying away from the cafe, then trying to walk more normally. His back still itched, he kept looking and listening for ambush. Rebecca moved up next to him, not talking yet, tilted her head. Two women, Hispanic - the ones from the cafe. The Hispanic shifted, eyeing him warily, and the older woman raised her hand.

"A few words, if you don't mind."

"Go ahead." Rebecca was watching her carefully. Couldn't tell if that one was armed, but he was positive the other one was, so he kept an eye on her.

"Someone has been raiding former Ashford research sites. They may or may not be related to the new player that wants you alive rather than dead, but they're almost certainly the ones responsible for the re-appearance of Veronica. And one - or both - has a price for most of your former associates. Preferably alive."

"Why warn me?"

"These people make my former employers - and coworkers - look sane. I'd rather not see the world burn." She turned and walked away, the other following, and disappeared down a different street than the one they needed.

"The hell?"

"Not here."

That made more sense than the rest of it. Didn't make him stop noting all the places snipers could be hidden, everywhere they could be ambushed out of. They made it back to the house in good time, nobody stopped them on the way. There was a fucking car parked around the side, local plates, plain - probably rented. He scanned the area - nothing obvious, too many places to hide, someone could be waiting anywhere. The fucking door opened, man, average height, hands empty,. No obvious weapons on him, could be hidden under the suit. He turned to look at them, stepped forward carefully and slowly, hands open and where he could see them. _Trent._

He moved in before Rebecca, scanning the room and listening upstairs. Nothing. Rebecca quietly closed the door behind them and turned to Trent.

"Nice timing." Rebecca's words were careful.

"I'm afraid it was a coincidence." Trent's eyes were glittering, his posture tense despite his careful movements. Guy was pissed as hell. Had been the last time too. "The recent attack in the States has accelerated matters."

"Yeah? What kind of matters?"

Trent gave him a cold look; Billy leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, scowling. He wanted some damn explanations from somewhere, and Trent was about the only source around. Trent didn't like it a damn bit, probably wasn't used to the help talking back.

"This is about T-Veronica. T-Veronica and the Ashfords."

Trent flicked a marginally less cold look at Rebecca, nodded, then started talking. Billy wasn't sure who the hell the Ashfords were; must have been involved in bioterrorism somewhere along the line because somebody was stealing their research, like that woman said. Something to do with that T-Veronica. Something to do with someone named Claire - Rebecca'd asked after Claire on the way here - Rebecca thought she was a target. Claire Redfield, Trent was calling her Miss Redfield.

"Unfortunately, T-Veronica is not the only Ashford project of interest. Alexander Ashford was an utterly incompetent virologist, but his other research projects are attracting interest."

"What other research projects?"

Ashford had been doing some kind of reproductive research back in the sixties and seventies. Billy didn't follow, he'd have to ask Rebecca for explanations later. Sounded pretty damn creepy, though. 

"What's left of his research is in England, and must be secured immediately."

"Which is where we come in."

"Exactly. There's little time left."

\-----

STARS arrived just as Hunnigan left. HQ was offering a currently-unused barracks for quarantine, along with medical care and meals, quarantine to be supervised by a researcher from the US lab. Claire didn't know the researcher; she didn't know everyone even in Rebecca's - the Vancouver lab, so that wasn't surprising. Nor was the resistance to providing transportation. A brief description of precisely how accessible STARS HQ wasn't smacked that argument down, and a round of phone calls with HQ got a grudging agreement to return the survivors to campus, and an even more grudging agreement to allow two TerraSave personnel to monitor the survivors.

"No, I'll go." Gabe shrugged at her look. "You're needed here, Redfield. And you got shot."

"I didn't forget, thank you." She shook her head; Gabe was right, she couldn't go, Gina couldn't either, and Pedro was not the guy she wanted to send to deal with STARS alone. "Fine. Take Mira with you." Neither of them would be readily intimidated or knocked off balance by any stunt STARS tried to pull.

"Got it."

She radioed Mira about the change in plans; she took it calmly, the news had probably spread. STARS arranged transport while they collected their gear and she briefed the others on the situation. The objections were less vehement than she'd expected, but this was one of the very few times they'd been directly attacked, and only the third time quarantine had been attacked; the other times had been people trying to retrieve family members. Leon returned just as the evacuation was starting; she handed him over to Gina so she could keep an eye on the process.

Gabe came up to her about halfway through. Gina'd introduced him to Leon, who'd been asking about unusual fires.

"Unusual fires, huh?"

"Can't get much more transparent than that. Told him there were fires in the buildings I searched. Send Khalid to escort him around tomorrow."

"Oh, that'll be fun." Jess had woken up, sort of; Michaela wasn't allowed to support her, but she was as close to her as the STARS people would let her get. "We can manage Agent Kennedy without you."

"He's not giving Gina any trouble. Hey, Mira."

Mira nodded to them. "Gabe, Claire. So we're with them until quarantine's over and they're brought back here?"

"Yeah. I've got a few of the usual coming in to provide services, and I'll try to stick around until they're cleared."

Gabe had her cell number; she gave it to Mira, then introduced them to the STARS team. She watched until they got on the trucks, then went back out to deal with Leon. He was slumped in a chair at a table, head leaning on his hand as he watched her people work; night shift was about to start, mostly guard duty and a skeleton crew of emergency personnel with BSAA and STARS to handle security.

"Out already, Leon?"

He looked up and gave her a tired grin. "Long day."

She dropped into a chair, shifting and stretching out her leg, trying to find a position that made it hurt less. "Same here. How'd it go with BSAA?"

"About as well as I expected. Think they're more impressed with you." He shrugged at the look she gave him. "Got what I needed and Chris found a bunk for me. So why don't you give me your version?"

She ran him through it; it had been so fast it didn't take long. "They didn't announce their plans before they started shooting."

"They can't all be comic book villains. What'd they want in quarantine?"

"Wish I knew." Even if they'd been going through every female student's social media, they probably wouldn't have been able to ID Jess off that video. Fuck. They didn't have to go through everyone's accounts, just the ones that hadn't updated since the beginning of the outbreak. Everyone else had probably been using them to keep in touch with family and friends.

Leon was not convinced. "Claire."

She shrugged. "For all I know, one of the survivors has rich relatives, Leon. So what's this chatter about me and Chris?"

"Source didn't have details, it was all second-hand. Someone's offering good money - " Wong's idea of good money was Claire's idea of a lottery win - "for information. Not a price on either of your heads or a kidnapping, just information. At that price, it has to be classified or otherwise secret. I'll keep digging."

"Thanks, Leon. Go get some sleep. Chris or I will have someone show you around tomorrow."

"I'm a special agent. I can check out a college campus by myself."

She rolled her eyes at him. "We'll have someone keep you out from underfoot, does that sound better?"

"Typical. Go get some sleep yourself."

He headed back to BSAA. Claire finished her paperwork, checked her phone - nothing that couldn't wait until morning - and got a few hours sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

Trent had packed them up and gotten them onto a chartered flight to the UK in a few hours, and Rebecca'd spent a while filling Billy in on the Ashfords and their Umbrella connection. She'd been tracking down their published research for years; Claire had dug up a fair amount of background information. Edward Ashford had been absolutely brilliant; his papers on viral latency and post-infectious disease syndrome anticipated later work by decades, although some of his hypotheses had been disproven by later research. Alexander's published papers had all been in human genetics and reproduction; the friend she'd gotten to look them over had called them intellectually fascinating and deeply disturbing, a man with an obsession. Alfred hadn't published anything at all that she'd been able to find, and Alexia's few publications had been scientifically brilliant and amazingly childish at the same time.

Not that any of that was any immediate use. The neighborhood had seen better days, and probably worse; there were little shops with multilingual signs, the houses looked well-cared for even where they'd been broken up into apartments, and there were a surprising number of people out and about. She hoped there was no virus stored here, they'd never be able to enforce quarantine fast enough if there was a spill. The car pulled up to an impressive townhouse in the middle of the block, clearly not now and possibly never had been broken up into apartments; Billy grabbed the bags and said something to the driver while Rebecca walked up to the door. The door opened smoothly, into a dimly lit, narrow hall; Billy followed her in and eased the door closed behind them.

"Company," Billy said softly. He put the bags down very gently.

The air smelled of cheap aftershave and oiled metal, probably not a cleaning service then, despite the general lack of dust and cobwebs. The first door down the hall was partly open, no light coming out. Rebecca moved quietly down the hall, mouth suddenly dry, hoping the floor wouldn't creak. It didn't. She spotted a flashlight beam in the room and moved quickly to the other side of the door. Billy drew his weapon and took up a position on the other side of the door as she drew hers. Voices muttered inside the room, and slow, cautious footsteps edged toward the door. The person - man, ordinary clothes, handgun - 9mm, extended magazine - rather than heavy weaponry - slid closer to the door. She deliberately moved, raised her weapon - _get him to focus on me, see if Billy can get the drop on him_ \- targeted his torso.

He started to smirk, then froze as Billy spoke, probably with a weapon at his back. "Drop your weapon. Tell your buddy in there to drop his."

The guy dropped his weapon. Rebecca frisked him, took a knife and a Taser, listening intently to the other room. Whoever was in there hadn't dropped their weapon and had shut off their flashlight, moved to the side of the room hidden by the door. Only one person by the sound of it. Billy started to pull the guy back, probably meant to grab a rope, but the guy dropped suddenly, fake fall, trying to knock Billy off balance. He fell back a step, kept his feet, but the guy was clear and reaching for the 9mm.

Rebecca slammed her booted foot with all her weight down on his hand and felt the bones give. He howled in pain and yanked his hand away, knocking her off balance, then slammed his other elbow into her stomach. She staggered but managed to keep on her feet, and Billy yanked him back and slammed him into the wall, the weapon sliding down the hall when the guy brushed it with his foot. He slid down, dazed, just as the other one in the room stepped into sight, still in the room, gun leveled at her head. 

"Drop it, bitch."

He couldn't see Billy, almost had to have heard him. She dropped her weapon and held her hands up, backed up against the wall at a gesture, kept her eyes on him and away from Billy.

"Drop yours, asshole. Kick it where I can see it."

Billy kicked the other guy's 9mm down the hall, where it skidded into the doorway, shifted his own gun into his left hand, hidden by his body. Rebecca watched the guy in the room, saw his muscles shift, and hurled herself to the side the instant before he shot. The bullet tore into the wall precisely where she'd been and she ran down the hall to the opposite wall. He moved - not quite out, just enough to get a shot - and Billy slammed the barrel of his gun into his head.

"Drop it, Weinberg."

He froze, eyes narrowing and body tensing. Then he dropped his weapon. "Coen, you goddamned bastard."

Billy grabbed his knife and tossed it down the hall. "Shut it." He jerked his head; Rebecca slid past to grab the knife. Weinberg moved, striking Billy in the stomach, then striking up to disarm him. Billy's shot went wide and Weinberg went for his throat. Rebecca grabbed a knife and stabbed him in the arm, aiming near the shoulder. The knife went in, Weinberg staggered, let go of Billy and clutched his bleeding arm.

Billy choked, coughed, and punched Weinberg in the face, smashing his nose, then again, splitting his lip and breaking teeth. Weinberg staggered as Billy's fist slammed into his jaw.

"That's enough!"

Weinberg collapsed. Billy stared at him, fists clenched and face twisted with rage. Then he blew out a long, heavy breath, his fists relaxed, and the rage drained out, replaced by contempt. "Yeah." He shoved Weinberg out of the way, on top of the first guy. "Goddamned motherfucking asshole."

"Grab the stuff, we need to get out."

He nodded and grabbed the bags, freezing at the door. A second later Rebecca heard a babble of voices outside. She jerked her head to the room and they ducked in, closing the door behind them and briefly flicking on their flashlights. A study, back wall panelled with portraits, the rest of the walls filled with bookcases, half the books dumped on the floor, an enormous mahogany desk facing the door with an assortment of glass paperweights and an old-fashioned banker's lamp on it, nothing else.

"Shit. Better find a back door."

They heard someone getting up outside, heavy dragging footsteps - the first guy probably carrying Weinberg - to the back. "Think they beat us to it." The room was surprisingly narrow. She shone the flashlights on the portraits - family portraits, mostly blonds and redheads, she'd guess late 19th century to the forties - a few generations of Ashfords, probably, and that didn't help. The room was surprisingly narrow, narrower than she remembered the townhouse being, as if there was another room taking up space - or a secret passage. The Ashfords had been obsessed with secret passages and trick locks. She checked the desk - empty and unused, not even a paperclip - and ran her hands along the underside. Her finger slid into a depression, just where someone could reach it sitting in the chair; she pressed it, and heard a click from the wall behind her. Nothing moved. She checked the back wall, carefully moving the portraits, until she found an eagle on the wall, directly above a pair of crossed polearms. She pulled the eagle carefully down until it clicked into place.

The panelling immediately behind the desk slid silently into the wall, revealing a set of steep, narrow stairs. Billy scouted it first, and nodded; Rebecca slid the pictures back into place and moved in behind him, scanning the wall. She spotted the mirror to the carving outside, slid the eagle up, and the panel closed. Well-maintained, so someone knew this was here and was probably using it. The stairs turned once, then terminated in an ordinary-looking door. Billy listened at it, then eased it open. It was as silent as the panel upstairs.

Rebecca played her flashlight over the room, cautiously in case of windows. Bookshelves, desk, table, chairs cabinets, all much dustier than upstairs. There was a sink in one corner , an old autoclave, an old specimen freezer; the freezer had been unplugged, the door left open, and there was enough dust inside to suggest it had been left for years. The autoclave was also empty and unplugged, equally dusty.

"Someone got here first." Billy dropped the bags on the floor with a disgusted grunt. 

The bookshelves and cabinets had been emptied, clear tracks in the dust suggested recently, the desk drawers all open and empty. "Dammit." She scanned the walls, but didn't see any obvious doors or an immediate place for another secret door. She flicked off her flashlight at the sound of faint voices from above, Billy doing the same. The sound was clearer closest to the door, and they moved quietly there to hear; Rebecca saw a tube in the wall, probably a listening tube, and pointed it out to Billy. 

They leaned against the walls, Rebecca trying not to shift her weight much. She couldn't make out much, just tones and the occasional odd word; it was very clear once, and they could just hear heavy footsteps. The police must have been in the study; she caught that the back door had been kicked in before the voices faded again. Nobody seemed to be searching the study or checking for secret passages; normal people probably thought that was all fiction. The noise started to drop off, either the police were leaving or they weren't moving around. Finally it was quiet and she cocked her head up. Billy nodded and she went for the stairs.

A door opened and closed upstairs and lighter footsteps crossed the room. She and Billy both froze. Whoever it was - a woman, older, the voice still brisk and firm - was talking to a repair service, probably on the phone since she only heard one voice. The call ended. 

They heard her walking around, probably near the desk considering how clear the sound was. "So. This house as well. I should have burned all your work years ago, Alexander." She walked back and forth, probably checking the bookcases. And the pictures, Rebecca hoped she'd put them all back. There was a click - the panel unlocking, then light came down the stairs as it slid open. She jerked her head - Billy scowled at her as she moved into the doorway, then stepped back. She wasn't nearly as intimidating as he was; even Claire was more intimidating than she was. Someone came down the stairs, slowly and carefully.

A woman, seventies or eighties, well-dressed, well-kept short white hair, back slightly bent. She froze at the turn in the stairs, staring down at Rebecca. Rebecca stared back, trying to think of something useful to say.

"Dr. Rebecca Chambers. Well, this is a surprise."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I rather expected you to turn up dead. Certainly not in one of the old laboratories." She shook her head. "I don't know what you wanted with my cousin's research, but you're too late."

"I thought the Ashfords were gone." Not that it mattered, and she was about to say something else, when they heard a banging from upstairs.

Billy scowled up the stairs. "Expecting company?"

"Hardly."

"Then you'd better stay here." Rebecca slid past her and ran up the stairs, quickly moving the carving to close the panel. Someone moved quickly and lightly through the house, doors opening, and ran up the stairs, before coming into the study. They walked quickly around, probably checking the shelves, and searched the desk.

"Empty."

"Where the hell's the old woman then?"

"Must have gotten out before we got here. Any sign of the stuff?"

"Nothing. Must have moved it already."

"She'll tell us where it is once we've got her."

The voices faded out as they walked away, and a few minutes later she heard another bang, probably a door. She waited a few minutes and heard nothing, then slipped quietly down the stairs. "Sounds clear. Check it."

Billy nodded and gestured at the woman. "You wait here."

"You do realize you are the intruders here?"

"You noticed you're an unarmed old woman?" Billy moved up the stairs in front of Rebecca. The old woman folded her arms across her chest and glared at his back.

Rebecca aimed at the panel before Billy got it open. The study was empty, and a quick search of the house - dining room, kitchen, bedrooms (all but one unused, and that one had been haphazardly searched) and tiny bath, attic with tiny rooms, probably for servants a long time ago - showed that whoever they were, they were gone. Billy moved to the back door and she headed to the study. "Clear. I suggest you get some protection."

The old woman gave her an incredulous look. "I'll take it under advisement. You are a terrible burglar."

"Sorry you're disappointed." Rebecca backed toward the door. She'd probably called the police while they were searching the house, they had to get out of there fast. She followed Billy out the back door and to an alley, then out and away.

\-----

#### 2 October 2012

Claire had had about two hours of sleep, several hours of arguing with the college administration about legal aid and the outside counselors, and an urgent mediation session between BSAA, STARS, and the legal aid group before the survivors came back. According to Gabe and Mira, STARS was as aware of that damned video as everyone else, judging from the questions they'd asked and their determined efforts to get medical information from the women. As far as Mira could tell, it hadn't worked, and as pissy as STARS had been, Claire figured she was right. Gabe went off to check the vehicles, and Mira to do a weapons check. She scanned through her phone: Neil was headed for Edonia with his teams, Tess had texted her that Vancouver was absolving itself of blame again, she'd missed calls from David and John, and Carlos was chasing down a lead in Brazil. He'd sent her the relevant info, she'd have to read it later.

She checked the number when it rang. "Jill?"

"Got some info for you."

Claire pulled out a notepad and pen from her pocket. "Shoot."

What had been left of the Ashford estate had gone to a Margaret Althea Sutcliffe-Bonneville, niece of Edward Ashford. There hadn't been much of an estate left since Edward had left almost half of it to her when he died, Alexander had spent an enormous amount fruitlessly suing her over said estate, and Alfred and Alexia between them had had absolutely no financial sense at all.

"Right, this is the interesting part. There's been a rash of break-ins at Sutcliffe-Bonneville's properties. More precisely, the properties she inherited from the Ashfords."

"No one's noticed a pattern?"

"All different jurisdictions. The last break-in was yesterday, in London. Looks like there was a dispute among thieves - bullet in a wall, some blood in a different location. Apparently nothing's been taken in any of the burglaries."

"Nothing she wants to admit to, at least. " Ashfords again, T-Veronica again. It had to be related one way or another.

"I've got our European branch looking into it."

Claire looked down at her notes. _Margaret Althea Sutcliffe-Bonneville_. Why did that sound familiar? "Know anything about her?"

"Not yet. You?"

"I feel like I've heard the name. You have copies of that research Rebecca did?"

"Yeah, I'll check it. Break's over, back to work."

"Talk to you later."

Claire limped over to Gina. BSAA had brought over all the decontaminated possessions of the survivors, packed in plastic and properly labeled, ready to be distributed as soon as the survivors had been debriefed. Macauley had apparently had the sense to ask Gina for advice on how to keep it all straight, and Nivans had been good about keeping her updated. Well, they'd gotten all the information they needed while searching, but it was good to get the details. She'd do a debrief once the survivors had been questioned, before they broke down and headed back to headquarters.

"Kennedy thinks those guys were after you."

"If they were, their aim would have been better."

Gina snorted. "Claire, you've got more enemies than Neil does."

"Speaking of Neil, what happened in Edonia this time?"

"Civil war broke out again. BOWs, zombies, the works. BSAA's managed to clear a safe zone and Neil's moving survivors there."

"God, what a mess." Neil had better European contacts than she did, but moving refugees around Europe was going to be tough; it had taken years to resettle all the Terragrigia refugees, and most of those had had countries to go back to.

Macauley arrived with the first set of survivors finished with their questioning before Gina could change the subject back. Gina found their possessions and collected the TerraSave phones while Claire called Mira over to escort them back to the student center; the counseling group had set up there, and the college had something of its own going. BSAA released the survivors in regular intervals after that, keeping them busy.

Michaela came out in one of the later groups, and came over to Claire after she got her possessions back. "Um ... you were with the group that found us?" Claire nodded, and she went on. "Did - did Jess come out yet?"

"No, not yet."

"Can I wait for her?"

"Sure." Claire gestured to the table. "Have a seat."

"Thanks."

Michaela slumped at the table, occasionally tugging at the sleeves of her shirt or the waistband of her pants; TerraSave's spare clothes were approximately sized at best. She was more interested in the quarantine area than their discussion of whether Rita was able to leave the hospital yet and who was staying behind if she wasn't, perking up at each new group and slumping again when Jess wasn't there. Claire counted them up; there could only be one group left, considering how few survivors they'd found. The delay was long enough that Mira got antsy and Claire was considering whether she needed to find out what was going on; just when she was considering her options, the door opened and the last survivors came out. Jess was scared, the fear easing up when she saw Michaela, and she managed a smile; Michaela shot to her feet and hurried across the room to hug her. The senior lawyer from legal aid had come out with them and came over to Claire while Gina handed out the last bags of possessions.

The questioning had been generally careful, legal and thorough, but there'd been a disproportionate amount of attention paid to the women, either directly or by asking about them. If anyone had said anything directly about Jess, she probably would still be back there with the lawyer; maybe STARS had upset people enough that they wouldn't talk. Rebecca she might have trusted enough to say something, but she didn't know these people, or Ross, well enough to take the chance.

"Half these kids are from out of our area or out-of-state. Is there anything you have for legal aid elsewhere?"

"Most of them are running out of money this late."

"Don't remind me, my budget's already gone to hell."

Jess, clutching a plastic bag with what little had been salvaged, came over, Michaela right behind. "You found us, right?"

"That's right. I'm Claire Redfield." The lawyer murmured something and left, back to their own group.

"Thank you." She took a breath, clearly steeling herself to keep going. "I'm Jasmine Baez. You - you were talking about legal aid? My mom said to make sure I found a lawyer, that JAG wouldn't be any use."

"Hang on a minute. Mira, go ahead and take the rest, I'll walk them over."

"You can't walk that far - I'll come back for them." Mira left with the others.

Jasmine's mother was an Army ordnance officer, but she didn't say what she'd told her, or why her mother was determined she get a lawyer. It was a good idea anyway. Claire had Gina call Gabe in; he was ex-Army and kept up with the veterans' groups and such that handled bioterror support. Jasmine relaxed a little when Claire asked her about STARS; she'd slept through a fair amount of it. Mostly she remembered being incredibly thirsty and hungry and having to eat and drink very slowly. They'd asked her a lot of medical questions, but she hadn't answered them, first from being mostly asleep and then from being really irritated about them. Michaela's experience had been about the same, though she'd been more awake and had refused to answer them out of privacy concerns.

Gabe arrived and Jasmine relaxed a little more, as if he reminded her of someone. He suggested a few military support groups that weren't strictly veterans only and a military dependents group, any of which might be able to point her in the right direction. Claire wrote them down on a scrap from her notepad and handed it over.

"Thank you," Jasmine said fervently. "I didn't know what to do."

"Hey, no problem," Gabe said amiably. "Now you've got somewhere to start."

Nivans came out, looking tired, and headed for Claire. "Looks like I've got more work. Mira'll get you over to the student center."

The two survivors left with Mira, and Claire went with Nivans to talk to Chris and Leon.


	10. Chapter 10

#### 3 October 2012

It felt pretty goddamn domestic, talking about the news or the lack of it over coffee and breakfast. Not much different from Madeira, but this place was smaller, without the patio or the garden. He leaned on the counter, shifting a bit to ease the stiffness in his back, then poured another mug of coffee for Rebecca. She hadn't slept worth shit the last few nights, he'd hear her get up and walk around, then find her half-asleep in a chair. Raccoon, probably, she'd glanced at a couple articles over the last couple days and tossed them away. She was quiet and all, but he wasn't sleeping that well either, waiting for someone to break in or start shooting. Weinberg or whoever he worked for, the cops - the old lady wasn't going to break in and shoot them herself.

Rebecca pushed damp hair out of her face and said thanks. Nice manners. Coulda landed with a worse roommate or housemate or whatever the hell this was.

"Raccoon set off your nightmares?"

He was surprised when she shook her head. "I wasn't there." She sounded bitter. Maybe guilty. "It was too late to do anything when I learned about the spill. Story of my life." She made an annoyed noise and then looked embarrassed. "Sorry. It's not the nightmares, I just - my mind starts cataloging everything I didn't do when I wake up."

"Everything you could have done to keep things from going to shit." Prison had been hell for that, he'd spent too much time shifting between fury at the whole goddamned mess and all the ways he could have gotten control of the situation before they started shooting.

"Yeah. I just wish I knew more about her." She turned her coffee mug in her hands, starting to talk more to herself than to him. "Edward Ashford was planning to abandon the lab when he died, taking material with him. Two of his assistants died with him, but we never found the third, any information on what happened to the material Ashford was taking with him, or what it was."

"You think the old lady's the third?"

"I don't know. Her name was Thea, but it could have been a nickname, or she could have changed it." She took another drink of coffee, then stared into the mug like it was tea leaves. "I don't know what she has."

"You think she has the virus locked up somewhere?"

"I hope not. I hope it's all paper records." She didn't sound hopeful. Considering these people weren't that much saner than Marcus, it wasn't likely. "I need - " her voice trailed off, and she stopped, clearly thinking. "I'm an idiot. I can contact people in BSAA."

"And give us away."

"If I do it right, I can buy us some time to get clear."

He'd heard about some of the stuff she was talking about. If it worked the way she said, they'd spent time digging through false leads before they got to the real stuff. Combine it with somewhere real populous, lots of people on smartphones and shit, and it would take more time to track them down even with London's fucking cameras everywhere. Sounded all pretty thin to him, and it wasn't going to save their asses from Weinberg or law enforcement. Rebecca agreed, but seemed inclined to go on anyway. He started to argue before it hit him.

"You think Weinberg or whoever - you think they'd start an outbreak if they got their hands on any virus she has."

She nodded. "Not saying that's their immediate plan, but broken vials - carelessness, firefight, bad luck - start a lot of outbreaks that weren't intended. And if it's in London, or close enough for a wave of infected to make to the city -"

Billy followed the thought. Big, crowded place like London, maze of roads and alleys, subway tunnels, almost impossible to barricade even if the infected had a single entry point. "Shit."

"I can leave you out of it, let it sound like I heard them talking and picked up Weinberg from that."

He shook his head, without really thinking about it. They'd both been there and he wasn't leaving her to deal with the fallout alone. "Nah. I can give you all the information."

She looked at him and nodded, then turned the laptop toward her. She created a new email address - generic-sounding initial-lastname - at a free service, frowned at the screen while gathering her thoughts, and typed up a brisk report of precisely what happened inside the house. He looked it over: crisp and to the point, no unnecessary clutter or rambling, no missed information either. He flexed his fingers, considered it for a minute, and typed up a brief comment on what he knew of Weinberg's Marine career and a longer one - still short - about the Congo incident. Rebecca looked it over and nodded, then put the laptop to sleep and they headed out, picking out a public library a fair distance from the apartment. Lot of work for something that might just screw them over. He kept an eye out on the way. Most of the crowds were just busy with their own shit, sometimes too busy with their damn phones to watch where they were going. A few of them were giving Rebecca the once-over; she either hadn't noticed or was ignoring them.

Ignoring them, he decided. She was keeping a good eye out on her surroundings, couldn't have missed it. Some punk - kid was probably twenty, if that - started to approach her, got a look at him, and backed off. Made it to the library in good time; Rebecca sent the email while he skimmed the papers. Nothing he hadn't seen already. She checked a few things on the laptop, skimmed the papers and they headed out when her phone rang. Trent again, telling them to meet him in an hour at a restaurant, gave them just enough time to get there from here. Least the guy picked up the damn check. They didn't talk about it on the way over, just some casual chatter about whether they should pick up groceries on the way back.

He took one look at the restaurant and said, "Way above my pay grade."

"Mine too," she agreed. 

"Overwork you and don't pay you enough?"

She shrugged. "If I wanted to be rich, I'd have gone into a different field."

Trent was waiting for them just inside, didn't keep them waiting. They followed him through the restaurant - damn thing looked like it came out of a movie, the kind about old money - to a small table. He wasn't expecting the old lady to be sitting there already, neither was Rebecca; Trent obviously knew. The waiter appeared almost instantly after they sat down. The old lady ordered a bottle of wine for the table and an onion tart as a starter.

"This is . . . unexpected," Rebecca said cautiously.

The old woman nodded. "I do apologize for the short notice. There has been quite a bit of interest in the family papers, rather more than expected, and I am pressed for time. My godson recommended you to assist in studying and cataloguing the collection, and possible suggestions for where to donate it."

Trent's poker face was starting to crack, and Billy'd bet it was the other way around, not that he had any idea how the old lady had tracked him down and gotten him to agree to this. The godson thing was probably a cover, he figured Trent was probably even less religious than he was. Meant the old lady was more dangerous than he'd thought, anyway.

"Well, it's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure what your family papers actually contain. My field is a bit specialized."

"I've read quite a bit of your work, and I think you'll find it very interesting. Particularly in regards to your most recent paper."

He'd have to ask Rebecca what that was about. The waiter returned with the wine and the tart, briskly pouring everyone a glass. None of the showy stuff from TV. The old lady ordered steak-and-kidney pie, Trent some kind of game dish. He stuck with steak, hard to go wrong with a decent steak, and Rebecca some kind of fish. The tart was good, reminded him of his Gran's onion kugel; so was the wine, but the last damn thing he needed was a buzz. 

"That sounds interesting. I can't commit to an extended time-frame at the moment, however."

"I don't think that will be a problem." 

Billy turned to Trent. "Got it all planned out for us, huh?"

Trent gave up the poker face entirely and scowled at him. "Regrettably not. I would prefer to finish this business quickly."

"Be glad to be done with it myself." He didn't want to see Rebecca in prison for trying to save him, didn't want to head back to his own execution, but he was goddamn tired of this life on the run bullshit. Probably been fucking tired of it in Toronto, but he'd patched together some kind of life there and didn't have to think about it all the damn time.

"I imagine so." Trent turned his wineglass, that black ring faintly shining in the light. "Some of your former colleagues have other opinions."

"Only some of them?" Anyone left from that squad wanted him dead. So did everyone who'd believed them. That didn't leave much.

"Yes. Others seem to be doubting them."

He had serious doubts that fourteen years late was better than never. "Nice to hear."

Trent's expression said he took it just the way he meant it. "Certainly. In the meantime, I believe extra security will also be needed."

"Been out of the field a long time." He might still have it for minor confrontations like Weinberg, but he'd been out of combat training a long time, and Rebecca didn't spend much time in the field.

"Personal security," Trent clarified, and the old lady broke off her conversation to give him a deeply irritated look.

"I think that is an over-reaction."

"I do not." 

The old lady scowled at him and turned back to Rebecca. "The collection spans some three hundred years, though the oldest material is of historical and familial interest only. The more recent material is of more general interest."

"I can see that." Rebecca glanced at him with a raised eyebrow, and he nodded. "Well, I'd certainly be interested."

"Excellent. We can discuss the details after lunch."

Rebecca asked about the ecological conference the old lady had been speaking at. Habitat restoration, forests and wetlands. Sounded interesting, actually, he'd dated a girl into that kind of stuff back in high school and gone out volunteering with her on it. And it had gotten him a landscaping job for a couple summers before he enlisted. Tough work, but a hell of lot better than flipping burgers or running a cash register.

\-----

#### 5 October 2012

Claire set her lunch on her desk and eased herself into her chair, trying to ignore the pain and furious itching of her wounded leg. Mission debriefing and hand-off to the next NGOs had gone smoothly, Gina had been pleased with BSAA cooperation, and Rita should be released from the hospital within the week; Pedro had stayed behind to escort her home. She'd be on medical leave at least a month, though. She hadn't heard anything new about the attack or who'd been behind it, or the leak in TerraSave.

She ate her lunch while thinking about it. Chris hadn't given her the damn files yet, just a description. It sounded like it had been going on a long time, and a few things sounded suspiciously like arguments in division meetings that hadn't made it into the actual reports. Narrowed the field at least - the other division heads and their immediate subordinates and secretaries. Maybe even her own secretary - she'd had three in the last four years, so unless all three had been spies, bribed, or blackmailed, maybe not. Without more concrete information, she wasn't sure what to do. Maybe Wong - there was no way she could afford Wong's rates to get anything out of her, even if it wouldn't come back to bite her on the ass.

Carlos hadn't reported in yet, but the location was pretty damn remote, no surprise there. He'd been tracking down leads, all of them leading back to a remote area that had been destroyed by a drug cartel implosion about ten years ago; there'd been rumors ever since of bioweapons, an outbreak, or both, and he thought someone might have taken it over. STARS had filed a legal challenge to Vancouver, demanding it release all documentation relating to Rebecca's disappearance; Vancouver hadn't responded yet. Jill had forwarded her an email, from an unfamiliar address.

She skimmed it first, then read it carefully a second time. Scene report of a burglary attempt, from someone who was carefully not explaining what she was doing there, identifying one of the burglars as Michael Weinberg, with someone else's report on the burglar and a '97 incident in the Congo which had to be the same as the one with Coen. She reread it a third time, then picked up her phone and called Jill.

"Read your email?"

"Where is she?" Rebecca's scene reports always sounded like her phrasing and voice, no matter how short and precise they were; Claire could probably have picked them out of a stack of a dozen.

"Quint's working on it. Did you read the other half?"

"Has to be the fugitive." The details were too specific for it to be someone who hadn't been there, and Coen was the only one with any link to her. "What the hell is she thinking?"

"I'll ask her when I get my hands on her. Trying to coordinate with BSAA Europe to get an investigaton started."

It would probably be the second, or possibly third question Claire would ask, somewhere after 'where the fuck have you been?'. "Anything else new?"

Chris had called Sheva Alomar - she'd met her and Josh Stone after Kijuju - for advice on digging into the Congo incident; they wanted more information before pressing the Marines on the case. Nothing on the recent attack, and the guy who'd taken her and turned up dead had been a merc, implicated in a few other kidnappings, murders and related crimes. She let Jill go so she could talk to BSAA Europe, then leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. Rebecca was alive. Rebecca was alive, she was probably free, she had a hell of a lot of explaining to do whenever she got to her, including why the hell she hadn't called her.

Claire made a face at her lousy priorities. Rebecca was alive, everything else was secondary, she could yell at her when they found her. Almost all her contacts were in the Americas, but a few of them might know someone through immigration and refugee groups; she'd wait to see what Chris came up with first. She texted David to call Jill, and got an almost immediate response that he'd gotten the email and to call him later. She finished her lunch and went back to writing up her report, still wishing for more information, and carefully eliding the locations she'd found survivors in; if there was a leak, the identity of the girl in the video was going to be a major target. Rita had seen the connection immediately, maybe not Pedro and the others. Well, it was something to watch for.

She called David later that night, once she'd gotten out of the office and eaten. He had no information on the Congo incident, but he had some information on the Marines.

"Samuel Regan? Wasn't he forced to retire during that financial scandal a few years ago?"

"Yes. There were some questions about his management of Dunnell Base, but they were dropped when he resigned." She heard David typing. "Nothing on Weinberg, but STARS still hasn't been able to get at any records or any new information."

"That's . . . interesting. You'd think they'd pass out some information to reinforce their position."

"It's not making them look good, though I suspect they don't care. There's no sign of bioweapons involved in any of this."

"Just plain greed." The financial scandal had covered bribery, fraud and embezzling, much of it related to supply contracts. "Kind of a relief, really."

David laughed. "Yes, actually."

There wasn't much more to say; they briefly discussed the other news and disconnected.

\-----

#### 6 October 2012

Sutcliffe-Bonneville's country house was huge, large enough for an entire wing to be devoted to a bed-and-breakfast and the old kitchen gardens to have been turned into a market garden and plant nursery, and still leave a private wing for the family. Rebecca wasn't particularly surprised at the secret library, carefully filed books almost hidden by stacks of cartons filled with more books, journals and papers. Even the secret lab behind a bookshelf in the library - more a lab storeroom, with no work equipment, a suspiciously modern specimen freezer, and an autoclave - wasn't that much of a surprise. There was a stack of cartons with a binder on top in front of the freezer.

"You kept virus in your _house_?" She dropped the bag with notepads and pens on an empty chair, almost knocking her radio loose. She checked it, adjusted it back to the correct settings, and put it back on her belt.

"I have the only key to this room. And the earlier forms of the virus were less infectious."

Rebecca shook her head and glanced at the lock; it was definitely not like the ones at the Spencer house or the training facility. Jill could probably get through in a minute. "That's - not a great lock. How much is there?"

"Four 1.2 milliliter vials, sealed. The rest of the material is non-viral tissue samples I haven't had time to destroy."

"What kind of tissue samples?" That was still more virus than anyone should have outside a properly built, secured lab - she wasn't even sure this had air pressure regulation - but not as much as she'd been afraid of. "Leeches, bio-engineered creatures?"

"Leeches? All of that was after my time. All human tissue. " Sutcliffe-Bonneville hesitated, clearly uncomfortable, and indicated the stack of cartons. "The folder catalogs the samples and their acquisition. Alexander was using some project of Spencer's as a springboard for his own obsessions with the family history and the family name, and some of those samples were stolen from the family tombs."

Even for an Ashford, that was crazy. "What happened to Alexander?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. He simply disappeared some thirty years ago, leaving an assortment of lawsuits in limbo. Once he was declared legally dead, the guardian for those horrid twins settled the suits and tried to put their finances back in order. I'd heard the girl died, and then the other - Alfred, I believe - died some years ago."

She didn't think Sutcliffe-Bonneville was lying. Maybe that had been the story that had been passed around, better than admitting she'd infected herself and stuffed herself into a cryotube for fifteen years. "What happened to your uncle Edward?"

"Alexander murdered him." Her voice was bitter. "Not that I could ever have brought in the law, under the circumstances."

"You're Thea."

"Althea. My middle name. I fail to see what relevance that has."

"We found the lab in Ste. Veronique. Edward and Alexander both left some of their research notes there." The lab walls had been marked with bullet holes.

Pain crossed Sutcliffe-Bonneville's face. "Ah. Yes." She gathered herself. Alexander and his father Edward had barely been speaking for years, and they'd had a falling-out - the way she said it sounded much more like a vicious fight - over Alexander's obsessions. Edward had also split with Oswell Spencer over the direction to take viral research, with Edward prioritizing controlling the neurological damage over everything else. "I'd been ill the night before, and gone to pick up some medicine in town. I stopped on the way back to check that everything had been properly stowed, and when I arrived - " She broke off for a moment. "Everyone was dead. My uncle, my dear friends Helen and James. I was told it was an accident, a broken vial, but we'd sterilized all but the vials I now have. I secured everything I could and fled."

"Nice family," Billy said from the doorway.

The old woman scowled at him. "I suppose yours is better?"

"Last I heard, we didn't shoot each other."

Rebecca changed the subject quickly. "Is this all Alexander's research?"

"No, he'd taken much of it to Rockfort. I doubt any of it survived. " She changed the subject back to the material here; it had barely been sorted beyond separating Alexander and Edward's work and identifying, at least partially, the material attached to the samples in the freezer.

"All right. Let me get started here." 

Anything involving Spencer should be checked out first; Rebecca decided to start with the binder and the stack of cartons. The old woman left, saying something about tea. Billy followed her out to an acid comment about not needing a minder. She shook her head and opened the binder. The first page was a listing of the contents of the freezers with the information on the labels, with an abbreviated source and the project it was attached to: Project W, Project Veronica. Project W was Spencer's, Project Veronica's Alexander's own. The next pages identified the samples by project, source and acquisition date. Almost all the Project Veronica sources were Ashford graves; Veronica Ashford's grave provided the last samples in 1968. The Project W material began in the early 1950s. Spencer. Project W, 1950s. Wesker had been born in the early 60s.

The first carton contained experimental data, all of it apparently related to human genetics, with various handwritten notes attached regarding its relationship to project goals and related research. Most of the names weren't immediately familiar, but Charles Davenport and Madison Grant had been eugenicists. Considering what Chris and Jill had told her about Spencer, it wasn't much of a surprise. The second carton contained research notes and analysis, detailed and extensive. She could gather that it was probably aiming at some sort of eugenics, and that there was something complicated with human reproduction involved, but she'd need a geneticist to get a clear picture of what exactly had been going on. She sorted everything into stacks on the lab counter, Project W, Project Veronica, both, and unlabeled.

The third carton was the jackpot, filled with reports and correspondence. She sorted it quickly, scanning the papers just enough to figure out which project they belonged to, then more slowly tried to sort out the data, notes and analysis that went with each report. It took her a few hours; there were still stacks of data that didn't have an associated report, and piles of correspondence not obviously related to either. She checked the cartons again, to be sure she hadn't missed anything more than a paperclip, and found a pair of slim leatherbound books, almost the same color as the cartons, at the bottom of the third carton.

"What is this crap?" Billy handed her a bottle of water.

"Insane, immoral and illegal." She opened the bottle and drank half of it, then got up and stretched, trying to work the kinks out of her shoulders.

"Guessed that part."

She grinned. "Yeah, yeah. This is all some kind of human genetic experimentation - two different projects, not sure of endgame on either. This is all way out of my field, but it references some nasty eugenicists from last century."

"Don't tell me there are fucking Nazis mixed up in this."

"The ones I recognize are all American." She rolled her shoulders. "It was huge back before World War II - "

"Sterilizations and state homes and all that bullshit." Billy scowled. "Fucked over some of my family."

She winced. "Sorry."

He waved it off. "So not the T-Virus?"

"Not yet, anyway." She held up the two leatherbound books. "Haven't checked these yet. How's the security?"

"Lousy. Nice camera setup and all, maybe enough to get the old lady in here and close up, but place is too damn open, too many ways to break in. Monitor room's secure, anyway." Fortunately the rest of the family had gone off to attend a wedding up north and given the staff a vacation.

Not a surprise, with all the windows and doors. Someone - Trent or Sutcliffe-Bonneville, she wasn't sure who - had paid for extra security to patrol the grounds, but neither of them had much faith in them. "Nothing happening yet?"

"Nah. She says this is the only place that hasn't been hit yet."

"Probably soon then. I'll keep working."

Billy headed out and Rebecca opened the top leatherbound book. Small, cramped handwriting in faded ink, dated 1956. The first pages were mostly about the writer - presumably Alexander - at university, ordinary day-to-day things, his interest in genetics and his squabbles with his father. He kept comparing women at university - negatively - to his ancestor Veronica, both physically and intellectually. His mother died of Huntington's chorea early the next year, and Oswell Spencer supported his genetic research out of university; his relationship with his father broke down steadily. The next volume picked up in 1958. Spencer had hired him onto Project W, and he was enjoying the research. He seemed uninterested in Spencer's superior man theory, or possibly just unimpressed with his choice of subjects; his obsession with Veronica was increasing.

_15 March 1958. Three successful births this year. The preliminary data analysis is promising, and suggestive of potential interesting research avenues. It is, however, a crude way to go about the project; with more data, and better material, the end result would be superior. Veronica - the process is still too unrefined. Still - there are others. If they are well-preserved . . . I will be visiting soon. I meant to visit Mother's grave; I can examine the other tombs at the same time._

Rebecca's mouth twisted in disgust. Were there any sane people in this family? She skimmed ahead - the trip came off, the mortar on the tombs was crumbling, easy access but potentially poor preservation - and he referred to several research reports she was sure were in the stacks. Months later, Edward apparently went off on a speaking trip, and Alexander visited the family cemetery again.

_20 September 1958. Veronica's daughters were not as well-preserved as I had hoped, nor as far gone as I had feared. I have plenty of material for study and later experimentation._

She skimmed again - more births for Project W and references to data analysis that she was sure were in the stacks, more arguments with his father, more research support from Spencer, and his plans sounded increasingly mad - Ashford, Spencer, she really needed not to be surprised by insanity. Near the end of 1959, he'd completed his analysis on Veronica's daughters, and was planning to use Project W to test his theories with more easily-replaced samples, without bothering to tell Spencer about it. Alexander was deeply irritated when Alexander ordered the tombs repaired, but he was deeply absorbed in his project and had no time to argue about it. The book ended in 1960, breaking off in the middle of a section about his plans to co-opt Project W again for the final round of tests. She scowled at it in disgust.

She stood up, stretched and left the book lying open. She took a notepad and a pen, wrote Project W on the first page, and summarized briefly, then tackled the stacks, sorting by date and setting aside ones specifically mentioned in the journal. She organized her notes by year, tracking the project's progress. Genetic analysis, first attempts at in vitro, first successful pregnancies, more genetic analysis. Notes suggested an assumption of the genetic basis for intelligence, based on fairly crude analysis and comparison of a self-selected population. By 1959, the research included an alarming amount on genomic imprinting and how to adapt, change or counter it. Project W's material went on past 1960; the last recorded birth was 1962, but monitoring and genetic analysis went on for years. She found one more hand-written note from Alexander, attached to a lengthy report from 1966.

_The A-series exceeds my expectations. Their intelligence, their development - they are extraordinary. Spencer is quite pleased, though I suspect he intends to terminate my funding soon. The process is refined, my techniques perfected. I no longer require him._

A-series. She added a note to the end of the page about Albert and Alex.

The radio crackled and made her jump. "Incoming. Meet you there, over."

"Understood, closing up. Out." She closed the door to the lab, hearing it lock behind her, and then out through the library. She'd just closed the panels over the hidden door when Billy got there.

"Old lady's locked in the monitor room - solid door, no windows. Called in the patrols - told 'em to keep a perimeter in case this is a feint."

She nodded. "How many?"

"Group of four. Hadn't split up when I came down."

Not great odds, but could - she stopped the thought before she jinxed them. The radio crackled, Sutcliffe-Bonneville warning them that the intruders were heading for a service door. They jogged down the hall and eased into the kitchen, ducking low to stay out of sight of the windows. They waited, weapons drawn and ready. A few minutes later, they heard footsteps outside.

"Clear. Lights upstairs and to the left."

She could make out faint noises - working on the lock. 

"Fat bonus for Chambers alive."

"Coen?"

"Beat the shit out of him if you want. Usual bonus for living test subjects."

"Bitch can have him."

"Old woman and her material's the priority. Take them down if they get in the way."

"Check."

The door opened, a thin flashlight beam flashing through before anyone entered. Big guy in the lead, helmet, bulletproof vest, no armor on the legs. Second guy slightly smaller, same outfit. Billy shifted, leaned out, she followed and they opened fire, bringing the first two down with leg shots before they could react. She ducked back behind the dubious shelter of the half-wall and cabinets just as someone opened fire from the door, bullets slamming through wood and plaster. 

Billy had a better view, ducked out quickly and shot once, then flung himself back as someone returned fire. She didn't know how badly they'd hurt the two who'd gone down, the other two were uninjured yet. She moved back, so did Billy, just before another round of fire tore through the wall. Splinters cut her face and hands. She heard footsteps, moving - one to each side, covering the area. Her ankles were starting to ache from the crouch. She could just make out shadows - they'd gone low, made themselves smaller targets. 

She raised her weapon. The target saw the movement and dodged, the shot missing, and she hurled herself to the side while he brought up his gun. The bullet smashed into the wall not far from where she'd been. Billy fired, the noise deafening, and then the other guy jumped him. She couldn't see well enough to shoot, the first one moved when she was distracted and body-slammed her into the ground. The world spun when her head hit the floor, she dropped her weapon, the guy slammed a knee into her gut and knocked the breath out of her. He hauled her up by the shirt and shoved his gun against her temple. 

"Drop it, Coen!"

Crap. She couldn't move with the gun to her head, but she saw the fight on the other side stop. The other guy - he wasn't using one of his arms very well. Weinberg? - rolled off and grabbed Billy by the shirt. Billy dropped his weapon. They were screwed.

"Call for backup."

He dropped Billy and grabbed his radio, calling in another team that had been waiting somewhere. The guy with her pulled her to her feet, not moving his gun from her head and marched her out the door. She heard movement behind her, probably Billy being moved out. No truck in immediate sight, they'd either have to move it in or hike them out. Hiking them out might give them a chance to break free. The radio crackled again. They'd taken out two of the hired guards to get through. The leader swore, and a minute later she heard the rumble of an engine. They were pushed forward, through a hedge to the service road. A truck - van, most ordinary thing on the road, probably fake plates - and four more men piled out of the back and headed for the house.

A few seconds later there was shouting and gunfire. More of the guards must have come in, maybe cut through the house. The leader shifted,, let the gun drift away from her head. She dropped instantly, throwing him off balance enough to stagger, throwing herself away from him. Her hand closed around a good-sized rock. She lifted it, swung, smashed it into his knee, knocking him down. The other guy yelled, Billy'd hit him in the shoulder. The leader raised his gun, she hurled the rock at him - it missed but it distracted him for a second, long enough to grab another rock. Billy was fighting the other guy for his gun, disarmed him and kicked it away.

"Go, go!"

They bolted for the house, hearing shouts behind them, in front of them. There was a struggle in front of the door, hand-to-hand and shooting, Billy dodged left - 

Gunfire from behind them, an explosion of pain in her leg. All the noise was suddenly very distant and remote - shock, she was in shock - the ground slammed up to meet her and everything went dark.


	11. Chapter 11

#### 8 October 2012

Up too late and too much whiskey: Claire hoped the goddamned medicine kicked in before she got to work. They'd lost Rebecca again. Jill'd given her more information, the important part being nobody knew shit and they were back where they'd started; she'd worry about the damn Ashford archives later. Sherry'd gotten back into the country and called as soon as she got caught up on the news, too. She stuck her bagel in the toaster and filled her mug with coffe just as her cell phone went off. She checked the number and picked up.

"Ms. Hunnigan?"

"Sorry to call this early, but I have urgent news."

She poured coffee into her travel mug. "What is it?"

"The men who attacked your quarantine area have started talking."

They'd been hired by a middleman to track down the female student in that goddamned video; they'd trolled social media accounts and had apparently gotten down to half-a-dozen students. Once they were in, they'd intended to identify the student or collect anyone sufficiently close in resemblance and hand her over to the middleman.

"You were the secondary target. It seems they assumed you'd be easily intimidated or incapacitated and could be collected on their way out."

She wasn't quite up to laughing. "Bad intel or they didn't listen?" She pulled the bagel out of the toaster.

"I believe the latter. Unfortunately, I have no information on the identity of the middleman or who was paying as yet. Agent Kennedy suggests you take appropriate precautions."

Most of what Claire wanted to say to that would be better said directly to Leon. "I'll consider it. Is there any information about whether there's an ongoing threat to the people who were in quarantine?"

"No direct information, but it seems a safe assumption. Are you able to contact them?"

"We may able to arrange something." She'd call in as soon as she got off the phone with Hunnigan. "I'll see about issuing a warning through the college if nothing else."

"I'd appreciate it. I'm afraid I couldn't get authorization to give you the details, but I am able to give you a brief outline of of the South American incident. The cultist leader of a drug cartel acquired the T-Virus strain in question from unknown sources and lost control of it, leading to the incident Agent Kennedy was involved in cleaning up."

Drug cartel. "Ms. Hunnigan, if this incident occurred in the Amazon basin, please get that information to Jill Valentine as soon as possible. BSAA has been hearing rumors of potential activity related to an abandoned site that may be related." _Carlos. Shit._

"Understood."

"Thank you for the information."

"You're welcome. I'll let you know if anything changes." Hunnigan disconnected.

Claire called Gina while she wrapped her bagel in foil, filled her travel mug with coffee, and headed for work.

#### 9 October 2012

Billy considered his situation and decided it was still fucking lousy. The cell was old and filthy and stank like hell; the air through the tiny window was hot, muggy, and smelled like a big body of water - not salty, probably inland. Maybe swamp or some other wetland. Had a heavy greenish smell to it too. Tropical, enough to fuck with his dreams more than the rest of it. Goddamn long flight from the UK, wherever it was. No idea where the hell Rebecca was. Only saw anyone when they shoved a tray of slop through the door and they didn't say shit. 

Heard footsteps, boots in a connecting corridor, and then distorted voices from another direction. The footsteps stopped and backed up as the voices came closer. Weinberg - looking like shit, face still a mess from the beating he'd given him days ago - came around the corner with two more guys, moving quickly up to the cell. All of them were armed, semi-auto rifle he didn't immediately recognize the make of, 9mms and knives. One of the guys pointed a rifle at him, the other had keys and a pair of handcuffs.

"End of the line, Coen."

Billy leaned on the door and smirked at Weinberg. "Must be getting old, Weinberg. Used to be better with unarmed people."

Weinberg grinned, as much as he could manage with that battered face. "Shut up, asshole." 

The guy with the cuffs gestured for him to back up. Once he did, he unlocked the door and stood behind it. Billy walked out slow, eyes on Weinberg but aware of the guy with the weapon aimed at him. The other guy cuffed his hands behind his back and gave him a shove toward the connecting corridor. They moved out, no sign of whoever'd been there; this was mostly blank wall with a few solid doors, storage or something, maybe. One of the doors wasn't closed all the way, but Weinberg and the other two didn't seem to notice. Course, Weinberg probably couldn't tell. Some mechanical sounds - ventilation system, pipes gurgling - some kind of distant, distorted animal noises - no human noises other than footsteps. They turned the bend in the corridor to a place where a gate had been jerry-rigged into place, black metal with a keycard reader at one side, a pile of junk at one side. Behind them, a door closed. One of the guys, the one with the keys to his cuffs, turned to check it out. Billy palmed a small piece of metal when his back was turned. Weinberg ran a keycard through the reader; the light glowed green, and the guy turned back, didn't even go check it out. Incompetent. He shifted a hand as if to scratch himself and flicked the piece of metal into the gate. It stuck, maybe enough to keep it from locking.

The corridor turned sharply again, then opened up into a brightly lit area. Glass-walled cells - zoo exhibits or something - lined the walls. "Target practice for us when the place fills up."

Mutant dogs like the ones back in Arklay in one cell, those lizard-men things in two others - one was changing color to become barely visible against the concrete - and weirder creatures in others, some kind of bird-thing, more giant fucking scorpions, and then things that used to be human. The zombies were the best of the lot, mostly recognizable as having been human. Some looked bug-like, black shells and pincer-hands, one like a fucking millipede that mewled and hissed, others like something out of a demented b-movie. The noise picked up as they moved through the zoo: howls, screeches, moans and hisses. 

"Hope your aim got better." He kept his head forward, didn't obviously search, but none of them looked like they used to be Rebecca.

The noise dropped as they got away from the zoo, heading for what had probably been a house at some point. "You never did know when to shut up." Before they reached the place, the noise from the zoo picked up again. "The hell - check it out."

The two guys moved back to the zoo, and Weinberg shifted his rifle into ready position. Nobody moving that he could see, must have ducked back around the turn. Couldn't hear shit over the nightmare noises from the zoo. Weinberg was tense, not so much that he was ignoring him yet. One of the guys went around - single shot from down the corridor and he was down. Second guy was more careful, brief exchange of fire, guy fell back wounded. The guy bolted back toward them when the monsters started going crazy, throwing themselves at the glass or beating on it. Siren, rattling noise, shutters coming down over the glass.

"Bring in the prisoner and then secure the intruder," a female voice announced over some kind of intercom or loudspeaker. "I have sealed the exit."

Whoever it was had enough sense to stay out of sight. Weinberg shifted his rifle back to carry, turned him around and gave him a shove. The wounded guy - looked like a flesh wound, probably hurt like hell but wasn't going to bleed out - brought up the rear. Just before they reached the building, there were a couple shots from behind them. Wounded guy went down, clutching his leg. Weinberg spun around and Billy kicked out at his knee. Too off-balance for a good hit and he nearly fell over, but Weinberg at least stumbled and the other guy got off another shot. Weinberg backhanded him, and he did fall, landing hard on his ass. Least it wasn't his head. 

More gunfire. Billy braced himself against the ground and kicked Weinberg's legs again, more effectively this time. Weinberg went down to his knees, swearing. The wounded guy pulled himself together and returned fire. Weinberg spun around, grabbed Billy's shirt and slugged him in the gut. Billy slumped, coughing, trying to get his breath back, and Weinberg half-dragged him to the building and shoved him inside. He fell again, twisting not to land on his face and landing painfully on his shoulder instead. The door slammed shut and he heard more gunfire outside. Shit.

He managed to get to his feet and survey the area. Row of chairs with restraints on the arms and legs, door back out with a red light next to it, door leading further in with a red light. He leaned on the wall instead. Gunfire stopped, and a minute or so later, the light by the outside door turned green. The wounded guy had a pissed-off stranger - fatigues, boots, no insignia, Hispanic guy in his thirties - at gunpoint, with Weinberg bringing up the rear.

"Looking forward to seeing you again."

"Didn't think we were such good friends."

Weinberg snorted and backed out the door, followed by the wounded guy. The door clicked shut and the light turned red. The Hispanic eyed the door outside, then studied the other door, clearly measuring whether he could take it down.

"So what pissed off your buddy there?"

"Think he doesn't like my face."

"Yeah? Looks like you didn't like his face."

Billy shrugged. "Screwed me over." Would have killed Rebecca if her reflexes had been any slower. _Congo._ "You?"

"Thinks I work for a rival." The guy turned away from the door, looking for cameras. "Looks reinforced."

"Probably waiting with a weapon on the other side." If there were cameras, he couldn't spot them. Looked like the other guy couldn't either.

"Yeah. Name's Carlos."

"Bill."

The light by the door leading in turned green and the door clicked, then slid open. Two soldiers, women, body armor, same make of rifle that Weinberg had been carrying. One snapped an order to Carlos - something about hands, maybe hands up, since he slowly raised them. The one - black, probably his age - covered them while the other - Hispanic or mixed, closer to Rebecca's age - moved in. They were herded through the door and down a boring corridor, cleanest place he'd seen yet, to a lab divided into two, the second half with two heavy steel doors and a glass observation wall guarded by heavy steel wire. Billy's cuffs were hooked to a restraint on the wall, Carlos cuffed to another restraint, and the soldiers left.

Billy scanned the room. Rebecca'd know what it all was, but all he could identify were computers lined up along a table and boxes on shelves; everything else might as well have been film props. Hard to see through the wire at this angle, but looked like there were some heavy restraints on the other side of the glass. Carlos was trying to get to his cuffs. He heard a soft click after a few minutes, just before he heard voices.

He couldn't make out words until they got to the door. Two women, didn't understand the language. Caught a few words - Coen, Oliver? didn't sound right - Rockfort. Carlos flicked a look at him on Coen and got worried at Rockfort.

Two women scientists - one his age, one a few years younger - came in, followed by the black woman soldier. The soldier scowled at both of them and took up a position where she could keep an eye on both of them. The older scientist headed for the equipment, the younger one for the shelves with the boxes. She took out needles, vials - blood draw, he thought, not planning to shoot him with T-Virus yet. The scientists kept talking - not English, not Spanish or Portuguese - and he couldn't pick out any words this time until he heard his own name again and the older scientist turned to gesture at him. The younger one said something annoyed about Weinberg; the older one shrugged and said something equally annoyed-sounding in reply and gestured imperatively at him.

"Guess Weinberg doesn't make friends here either," Billy remarked.

That got him a suspicious look from both the soldier and the approaching scientist. Not sure either of them spoke English, if they were they weren't admitting it. The soldier shifted her weapon into ready, not pointing it at him yet since the scientist was in the way. She took her eyes off Carlos, who shifted position.

"What? He's no friend of mine." 

The soldier scowled, gestured the scientist out of the way, and raised her weapon, snapping something he didn't catch but figured meant shut up.

Billy shrugged, which annoyed the soldier further, and shut up. The scientist came back, took out a pad - alcohol wipe, the smell was familiar - from another box, and reached over to clean a spot on his arm. Carlos moved, handcuffs in one hand, clearing the short space in a couple steps and grabbing for the scientist. Billy braced himself and kicked at her legs, knocking her off-balance. She fell backward, right to Carlos, who pulled her against him and wrapped his arm around her throat. The soldier aimed at Billy, and Carlos tightened his grip, the scientist clawing at his arm and gasping. The older scientist bolted for a panel on the wall, probably trying to set off an alarm. Carlos shouted something and she hesitated.

The younger scientist's attempts to pry Carlos loose were slowing. Carlos had a tense, harsh argument with the soldier, jerking his head at Billy once. The soldier reluctantly moved, lowering her weapon and pulling keys from her pocket; she unhooked him from the restraint and unlocked his cuffs. He moved quickly over to Carlos, who snapped the ID card from the scientist's lanyard and tossed it to him. It had a chip in it, probably a keycard; he stuck it in the reader and the door unlocked and slid open. He went through first, wishing for a weapon; the soldier was too alert to take down easily. The corridor was empty and Carlos dragged the semiconscious scientist through with him.

Carlos released the scientist and cuffed her hands behind her back, keeping a grip on her; she gasped for air. "Saw a copter landing on the way in." He gestured toward the back of the building. "Heading that way for transport out."

Billy shook his head. "They grabbed my partner."

The scientist, catching her breath, gave him a sharp look. Spoke some English, anyway. Carlos gave him an odd look, then nodded. "Search on the way."

The place had been cleared out, maybe while they were in the lab, empty, silent and creepy as fuck. The scientist's keycard opened up storerooms of medical and scientific equipment - mostly useless, not even a knife. Couple abandoned - or "abandoned" - tablets left on a table. Carlos picked one up while Billy checked the kitchen.

"Still connected," he said thoughtfully, swiping across the screen. "Looks like they're smart enough to keep the secret stuff on a separate network." He dropped the tablet. "No access to anything useful."

Billy tested the knives in the kitchen, cheap and flimsy with poor edges. Anything better quality was either hidden somewhere or locked up. "Nothing worth shit."

They moved on again, past a hastily-abandoned bunkroom, a row of empty cells - doors hanging open, signs of recent occupancy in two of them. Carlos blocked the doors open with his body while Billy searched, but no way to tell if Rebecca had been in either of them. The scientist was starting to look freaked, as if this wasn't what she'd been expecting either.

"Something's up," Carlos said grimly. "Two unarmed guys and they evacuate everything?"

Billy turned to the scientist. "So why don't you tell us what's going on?"

She scowled at him and didn't say anything.

"Yeah, I think - " you speak English, he meant to say, and was interrupted by the sound of helicopters.

Carlos swore and took off in the direction of the sound, dragging the scientist after him. They ran into an empty control room, windows on an airfield, half a dozen helicopters rising into the air. The scientist swore volubly, and then Billy heard running men in the corridor. He slammed the door shut and dragged a nearby table in front of it; a second later someone slammed bodily into the door. Carlos helped him drag another table over to brace the first, then they ducked to one side of the door in case someone got the bright idea to shoot through it. The scientist fled to the other side of the room, ducking under a table.

The helicopters - big cargo helicopters, a few combat copters for escort - flew away in formation. Two smaller copters - combat copters, he could just make out the guns at this angle - were left. Four were hanging around the outside, not heading back inside yet. He jerked his head at the door to the airfield, and Carlos nodded. They scuttled around the edge of the room, trying to stay out of sight from the windows, as someone slammed into the door again. They paused at a table full of tools - one big spanner that Billy grabbed, a crowbar for Carlos - and got to the door. More helicopters, coming from a different direction, a burst of noise and voices - radio panel.

The only thing he picked out of the noise was BSAA. Carlos looked as surprised as he did, and then someone slammed open the airfield door. Billy heard bones crack when Carlos slammed the crowbar into the first one's ribs. He slammed the spanner down on a rifle, forcing it out of the soldier's hands, then swung it at the soldier's face. She fell back, and Carlos dropped down and grabbed the rifle. Billy struck another rifle with the wrench; that one kept the rifle but their aim was ruined, bullets spraying the ceiling instead of him or Carlos. 

Carlos shot, wounding the first two, the others backed up outside the door, just out of easy shooting. Billy dodged to the side just before they shot in, close enough to hear bullets blow past him.

Red lights flashed inside and out, a siren started, and the soldiers outside bolted for the copters. Carlos dragged the two wounded soldiers as a steel shutter started to drop down over the door and windows. He could just hear the copters start up as the shutters closed.

"You disarm them, I'll get the radio!"

Billy nodded and relieved the soldiers of their sidearms, knives and remaining rifle, keeping a sidearm and the rifle for himself, and dropped the rest on the table. Carlos was busy at the radio panel, talking rapidly in Portuguese. Nobody was trying to force the door right now, he could barely hear voices over the siren. The scientist crawled out from under the table, looked at the soldiers on the floor, and raised her hands. The siren dropped to a low wail and cut out.

"There is a medkit under the radio panel."

Carlos fished it out and tossed it to her. Billy covered her while she worked on the two wounded soldiers, keeping an eye on the door at the same time. No noise, no one trying to break it down. Maybe just waiting, wasn't like there was any other way out. The scientist finished and wiped blood off her hands.

"So how long before whatever they let loose tears through the walls?"

The scientist twitched. Carlos shrugged.

"Give it ten. Those Hunters can tear doors off their hinges."

"Hunters?"

"Big lizard things. They hunt in packs."

"Great." The one they'd encountered back then had been enough trouble. "So how do you end up making monsters? They run a recruitment drive, say 'You like monster movies? Is Dr. Moreau your role model? You'll love working for us!'?"

The scientist sat back on her heels and gave a short laugh. "Nobody in this business has that much of a sense of humor."

He was about to say something else when he heard a screech outside, muffled by the shutters, then a second and third. Lizard-things. He could just hear something else hissing through the shutters, maybe that big millipede thing. The scientist cringed away from the shuttered window.

"They let everything out?"

The airfield door rattled alarmingly when something slammed into it. Carlos turned to cover it as the screeches were joined by multiple shrieks. "Nice welcoming party for the BSAA."

"You can't just buy beer and pretzels like normal people?"

"I am not in charge of welcoming parties."

"What are you in charge of?"

"I'm a physician, I'm in charge of health exams and testing -" She scowled at him. "Son of a bitch."

The shrieks were fading and so was the shrieking. Either running somewhere else or getting eaten. "Testing what?" Carlos demanded.

She considered not answering, clearly weighing her options, then admitted that she was supposed to monitor prisoner health and test them for viral compatibility. She suspected everyone else had evacuated out to Rockfort, which was where prisoners with high compatibility were sent and high-level research was conducted. There'd been three more high-compatibility prisoners.

"Dr. Chambers?"

"She wasn't here. I heard she was shipped directly to Rockfort. I don't know where it is, I've never been there."

Damn sure Carlos knew about it and didn't like it at all. Another round of copters overhead - BSAA? the other guys returning? - and then the sound of a copter spinning out of control, a immense whump when it hit the ground. Another blast - gas tank? - gas tank, the smell of metal, plastic and burning flesh.

"Shit, that sounded close."

Someone - several someones - shouting at the door into the building, and the steel shutters to the airfield started to rise. The scientist flattened herself on the ground, Carlos ran to one side of the door, and Billy took the other. More shouting and shooting outside as the door to the building smashed in, knocking the tables askew. Someone shot through the open space, the angle off so that the bullets hit the other side of the room. They struck again, knocking the tables out of the way, one landing in front of Billy and screwing up his ability to move. They shot again, bullets closer this time, the angle still off, and then they stormed through. Billy shot, first rounds hitting kevlar, aware of Carlos shooting from the other side and shouting from the airfield. Glass shattered, the door burst in, and someone yelling in Portuguese and English. All he could pick out of the noise was BSAA.

They started to retreat, but there was more shouting from the other side. Weinberg spun, raised his rifle and aimed at Billy. Billy hurled himself to the side, falling into the goddamn table, Weinberg barely missing.

"How's my aim now, asshole?"

"Still shit." He scrabbled to the side, knocking the table over again as Weinberg shot again, deliberately aiming just behind him. The rest of them were clustered up, shooting at Carlos and the other guys, who were shooting back. A stray bullet tore through the table, grazed his leg, and smashed into the floor just behind him. Weinberg laughed. Billy scrambled up and tackled him. Weinberg twisted as he fell, landing hard on one elbow, then slamming the rifle butt into his face. Billy spat blood at him and punched his wounded shoulder, then knocked the rifle out of his hands and slugged him. Weinberg slammed his knee into Billy's gut, knocking the breath out of him, shoved him on his back and pulled a knife. Billy grappled with him for it, wrenched it away from his neck. Weinberg slashed his face, Billy just shoving his hand up before he reached the eye. He went for Weinberg's throat, wrapping his hands around it and squeezing. Weinberg choked and gasped, dropping the knife to pry uselessly at Billy's hands, his face turning purple. 

Something slammed into his wrists. He lost his grip and was yanked to his feet and away from Weinberg, who collapsed gasping for air. Carlos held him back while he caught his breath and his hands slowly relaxed. Someone in fatigues with a BSAA South America patch on the sleeve picked up and disarmed Weinberg.

"You always start a fistfight in the middle of a gunfight?"

"No." One of the dumbest things he'd ever done. The room was full of BSAA agents, taking the scientist into custody and checking on the two wounded soldiers from earlier.

"Good. Get your face fixed up, because there's a lot of people who want words with you, Coen."

Shit. "What about Rebecca?"

"I'll send the information ASAP, but she's why they want words with you." He shook his head. "Mission to Rockfort might be ready by the time we get to base."

Somebody'd get to Rebecca, anway. Billy followed Carlos to the BSAA medic, who cleaned and stitched up the slash in his face.


	12. Chapter 12

#### 9 October 2012

Rebecca woke slowly and reluctantly, vaguely aware of cold, pain and that something was terribly wrong. She lay on a large bed with carved wooden posts, in a dimly lit room. Trying to sit up made the throbbing burning pain in her leg very immediate, and she pushed up the hospital gown to check the wound. Cleaned and sutured, no exit wound. Given the location, it had probably been extracted. No fever, no itching, no confused thoughts. If she'd been infected, it hadn't taken hold yet. She was covered in bruises new and old, no sense wasting time trying to figure out where any of them came from.

She was wearing nothing but the hospital gown. The room was fairly small and smelled new - fresh wood, fresh plaster, fresh paint - with a table lamp on a small table against one wall, a wardrobe next to a mirror in the corner, and a door facing the bed. She stood and limped across to the wardrobe; no underwear, socks or shoes, just sleeveless tunics and skirts that looked too large for her. The doorknob turned easily, and the door led into a small sitting room. The door on the other side had a red light to one side; she limped across and found it securely locked, the doorknob not moving at all. A monitor hung on the wall next to the door, suddenly lighting up with a video of a blonde woman - strangely distorted, something wrong with the shape and proportions.

"Hello, Dr. Chambers. How pleasant to see you again. Your wounds have been treated to permit your proper use. I am sure you will want to greet Claire when she arrives to retrieve you, so please enjoy the hospitality of the Ashford family until she arrives." The monitor went dark, then test results appeared in various windows on the screen.

Ashford. Veronique Ashford. How had she survived, what did she mean Ashford family? She was the entire surviving Ashford family. She hadn't mentioned Billy: was he a prisoner here or dead?

She scanned the rest of the room. A toaster, microwave and a bread-box sat on a table on one wall, next to a refrigerator filled with fresh fruit, cheese and packaged frozen food. Another door led into a tiny, apparently clean bathroom - she could see a wall-mounted sink, the edge of a shower, and a toilet. There was a small table with a chair near the door to the bedroom; she half-fell into the chair, her leg hurting like fire. 

It was a very odd way to treat a prisoner you were presumably planning to turn into a B.O.W. and use as bait. 

\-----

It was going to be a long night. Claire stepped out onto the terrace, despite the cold and damp, needing a few minutes of peace and quiet. There'd been an alleged assault, or possibly more than one, on survivors from the college; the news was a mass of conflicting rumours and hysteria that her people could sort out better without her standing over them. STARS was working on Weinberg and the Marines; Jill was still in England dealing with Sutcliffe-Bonneville.

And Ross had just called to tell her his first attempts at recreating the antivirals had failed. She walked out to the edge of the terrace, looking down the hill to the highway, watching car lights move along. Past the highway was darkness, a farm with no visible lights at the moment. She still had the last batch Rebecca'd made for her, but those would expire soon. If Ross couldn't figure it out - well, she'd find out if she had a latent infection fast.

She turned around as the door opened, hoping she didn't look as annoyed as she felt.

"You've got a visitor. The receptionist went home already, and Gabe couldn't get rid of him, so he and Gina are keeping an eye on him. Suit, corporate or government. Said his name was Trent."

Claire almost bolted for the door. "Trent?" No wonder Gabe and Gina didn't like the looks of him.

"You need me to call security?"

She shook her head. "He's not going to shoot anyone." Trent almost always had someone else handle that part. She hurried down to reception, wondering why Trent had decided to reappear now.

He was waiting at reception, having a quiet, tense conversation with Gina while Gabe scowled. He looked older - well, it had been twelve years since she'd seen him, of course he was older - and thinner, almost gaunt. Still extremely well-dressed, carrying a briefcase and a laptop bag. He turned at the sound of footsteps.

"Director."

"Mr. Trent. I suggest we continue this conversation in my office."

Gina folded her arms across her chest while Gabe scowled. "You know him?"

"I know him," Claire said, somewhat grimly, and turned for the elevator, ignoring Gina's glare. Trent followed her, not speaking until they reached her office; her secretary had gone home already, and the place was empty. "I assume this isn't a social call." She leaned on her desk, rather than sitting behind it; Trent was hardly going to be impressed. He glanced briefly around the office then stood facing her.

"I'm afraid not. Dr. Chambers has been sent to Rockfort Island."

She gripped the edge of her desk, feeling like the ground had been yanked out from under her. She didn't bother asking if he was sure; his information was always accurate, if incomplete. "When? By who?"

"Almost immediately after her capture." 

Trent took out the laptop, moving slowly and keeping his hands and the bag visible while he did, then set it on her desk and opened it. He must have had it in sleep mode, because it woke up immediately, revealing a video. He clicked play. The video showed a military or paramilitary facility somewhere, largely indistinguishable from any other facility other than most of the personnel - all of them, actually - were female, with a rolling stretcher waiting. A truck rolled in: a tall, muscular guy in cuffs was shoved out first, almost falling on his face, followed by two men. He turned his head toward the camera - Coen, it had to be Coen - when one of the women gestured to something out of frame. It looked like Coen considered stalling until one of the men, who'd clearly come out badly in a fight somewhere, shoved him in that direction. Rebecca - unconscious with a heavily bandaged leg - was handed out and loaded on the stretcher. She spotted a patch on one of the women's arms, out-of-focus, then again as they maneuvered the stretcher. Eagle, polearms - Ashford family crest. The video ended.

"The Ashfords are supposed to be _dead_." Her hand curled into a fist on the desk. "Unless Alexander is in hiding somewhere. Or Edward's niece is involved."

"She is not responsible." Trent sounded unusually fierce. "Alexander is dead."

"Then who's playing Ashford?" Claire unclenched her hand and laid it flat on the desk.

"A woman, who may be pretending to be Veronique Ashford."

Who would want to? "May be?"

"There is a small possibility that she is Veronique."

The world tilted again, and she leaned briefly on the desk. "How is that possible?"

"Two of the guards posted on the Ste. Selene facility were attacked and severely injured at some point after the facility was damaged. The search was somewhat cursory due to the damaged condition, but the only body parts discovered had been embalmed and preserved for some time."

No body. She could have been - should have been - crushed under the collapsing ceiling. "And you think she bought Rockfort when it was lost to unpaid taxes. Why tell me instead of STARS or the BSAA?"

"You have a more direct interest in the matter, and I may be able to get you to Rockfort."

Did he know she was infected, or just that Veronique had been targeting her? It didn't matter either way. "I can't go in alone." She shouldn't go in at all, she should leave it to the BSAA.

"That is not my intention."

Which wasn't a promise or an assurance. Trent was reliable until you hit the end of his information. She shouldn't be thinking about this. "Are you aware of an attack on survivors of the recent attack?"

He shook his head. "Unfortunately not. It may be connected to Rockfort, but there are other actors who have taken an interest."

"Such as Alex Wesker?"

Trent nodded. "Her current location is unknown."

Her. Well, that figured. "Unless she's at Rockfort."

"I doubt it. The Weskers had little use for the Ashfords, and vice versa. I'm afraid this was somewhat unexpected and haste is required."

It usually was. "Of course it is." She considered, then shrugged. "Give me a minute for the paperwork." She swung around to her computer, woke it up, and filed a notice of absence due to a personal emergency, then emailed Chris that she was checking out a lead. There were going to be questions and general pissiness out of HR later, but there usually was; Chris was going to be furious when he figured out what she was doing. She collected her go-bag and her weapons - cleaned, checked out and repacked after the last incident - from the locked closet and turned back to Trent, who was studying the collection of awards and photos on her wall. "All right, done."

She left word with Pedro on her way out the door. 

\-----

Hurry up and wait had been the rule in the Marines and it looked like it was in the BSAA too. Least they'd let him shower and shave and given him a set of spare fatigues. Fed him MREs, but still better food than the jungle base, and the cell was clean and dry. No sign of Weinberg or any of the other guys from that base, must have locked them up somewhere else, not that he minded; they'd be shit company. Voices and footsteps - Carlos and another BSAA guy; Carlos had a North America patch and the other guy a South America one.

"BSAA's ready to interview you." Carlos unlocked the cell and the other guy held up the cuffs. 

"You mean interrogate," Billy said, as he was cuffed again. His feet weren't shackled at least, making the walk across the compound easier. They were most of the way across when he saw the car near the building. Trent got out first, moving stiffly, and offered a hand to the other passenger, a short woman in - not fatigues, really, brown pants, dark gray hooded jacket with a large insignia on the back, red hair braided and pinned up. "What's he doing here?"

Carlos had scowled at Trent and then turned to look at him. "You know him?"

"Trent? Not sure I'd say I know him, exactly. Don't know her." She wasn't BSAA or military, maybe an ex-cop; she pulled a duffel from the car and slung it easily over her shoulder. She glanced around briefly and spotted Carlos, face lightening; not quite a smile yet, but she knew Carlos, probably liked him. She got a look at him and her expression darkened; guess she knew who he was too.

Carlos nodded. "Haven't seen him in a long time. Come on."

Trent and the woman were escorted into the building just before they got there; they were allowed in, and sent down a hallway to a large conference room. The BSAA agent with them stood guard outside the door. Inside were BSAA people, mostly with BSAA South America patches; one brown-haired woman and a younger man had North America patches. The younger man left. The woman took a seat at the table next to an irritated older man - base commander or close to it, not happy about North America horning in on shit by the looks of it. Carlos led him to the other side of the table and went to stand against the wall, and one of the other BSAA personnel started asking questions. All about the base, its personnel, the creatures he'd seen in the cages. He knew jack-shit about most of what they were asking, didn't have names for anyone other than Weinberg and probably couldn't pick them out of a lineup. The questioning went on for a while, doubling back and tricky phrasing to con him into spilling his involvement or whatever. Nothing about England or Arklay or even Rebecca, which surprised him; Carlos'd said Rebecca was who people wanted to talk to him about.

Eventually the base commander held a hand up. "All right, Valentine. He's all yours. Not the rest of them."

"Keep me updated on this Weinberg. He may have some charges waiting for him elsewhere."

"Very well." The South America personnel left and Trent, the redhead, and the other North America BSAA man came in a few minutes later. Trent took a seat next to the wall; the redhead leaned on the wall next to him, the BSAA guy standing at ease next to her.

The brunette studied him. She was probably younger than he was, maybe not by much, hard to read; wasn't impressed or worried. "Go ahead and uncuff him. I think we can handle him if he decides to be stupid."

Carlos did and Billy rolled his shoulders and stretched his arms. "Not planning on it, ma'am."

"Good. Jill Valentine, BSAA Intelligence."

Valentine. Might have been one of the Raccoon STARS. She started with the first time he'd met Rebecca, calm and thorough as they went through everything. He kept the commentary out unless he was directly asked, but the further he got the more unbelievable it sounded. Valentine was almost as poker-faced as Trent, he couldn't see Carlos at this angle, the redhead was frowning, and the other BSAA guy was getting steadily more incredulous. 

"Once we got clear, Rebecca took my tags and said I was officially dead. She headed down to another mansion and I went the other way."

Valentine nodded and moved on to what he'd done next, which was get out of the damn forest and up to Canada. He'd gotten complacent in Toronto until the outbreak. Hadn't expected Rebecca to show up, damn sure she hadn't expected to see him again. The redhead straightened, listening intently as Valentine took him through it, sharp, smart questions clearing up every detail of his interactions with STARS and Rebecca.

"Director?"

"Accurate," the redhead said, leaning against the wall again and watching him speculatively. Not Canadian, not BSAA. Didn't remember seeing her with the STARS people, either. Maybe she was with one of the NGOs.

The aftermath got the most attention and the sharpest questioning, especially Trent, the old woman and what she'd had in those houses. Couldn't say much there, Rebecca'd handled that and she hadn't gotten that far since they hadn't been there that long; she'd been making notes, hadn't seen what about, but he mentioned the eugenicists. Rebecca'd gone down, he'd tried to grab her and they'd both been captured. He went through it more than a few times before she was satisfied.

"Report on the Congo incident."

It staggered him briefly. Probably interrogated Weinberg already or gotten the story from the Marines. Wasn't going to be another chance to get his side out, though. He went through it, goddamned clusterfuck all the way from getting dropped out of the strike zone to the CO ordering the roundup. They'd clocked him, he wasn't sure if he'd lost consciousness or not, he mostly remembered staring at a dead man for what felt like hours. Didn't know why they'd bothered hauling him out, pretty damn sure they regretted it, though he kept that behind his teeth. Trent probably knew everything and was fitting his story in with the information he'd gotten from the Marines, Valentine wasn't actively disbelieving him, the other two looked thoughtful.

"Mr. Trent, I want to speak to you further. Nivans, Oliveira, take the prisoner and the Director and await further orders."

Both he and the redhead were hustled out of the room and into another one, small and plain. Carlos didn't cuff him again; Billy figured he'd better not do anything stupid, and instead slung himself into a chair in the corner. Both Carlos and Nivans ignored him temporarily in favor of arguing in muted tones with the redhead. Sounded like she'd come down from the States with Trent, neither of them and probably not Valentine approved. She didn't sound impressed with either of them; he heard his name mentioned and something about the hotel. He got a better look at the back of her jacket - TerraSave, they'd been at the hotel, still in quarantine when he got out. Valentine'd called her Director, must run something there. Didn't explain what she was doing here, not that anyone was likely to tell him shit.

She walked past them, turned a chair to face him and dropped into it. "Claire Redfield, TerraSave."

He shrugged. "Don't think I met any of your people."

"No, I'd have heard about it. I did end with multiple stories about you."

"What, that I was handsome and charming?"

She grinned, the sort that meant a hell of a lot of fun and a hell of a lot of trouble. "Jury's out on the first one, general consensus was that you had a hell of a scowl." 

Claire Redfield. "You know, Rebecca mentioned you a couple times. Sounded worried."

"Rebecca always worries." Nivans and Carlos both shot her incredulous looks. "So why don't you tell me what went down at the hotel? Think your version is the only one I don't have."

Billy figured Rebecca had reason to worry, given that grin and the fact that she'd come down here with Trent. Didn't see any reason not to tell her about the hotel; she'd probably gotten the story from the NGOs and her own people, maybe Rebecca too. Asked her what the conference had been about.

"Nothing exciting if you're not in the business - research presentations, a lot of panels on the 15th anniversary of Raccoon City, workshops."

Someone stepped in to call Redfield out to talk to Valentine again.

"So when do I get shipped back?"

Carlos shrugged. "Jill - Agent Valentine - makes that decision. Might want to keep you in BSAA custody until we get Reb - Dr. Chambers back."

"First name basis with the brass?"

"Long story."

\-----

Jill was not impressed and Chris - still in the US - had told her to throw Claire on a plane and ship her back to him. He didn't actually mean to shove her in the cargo hold, probably. Jill was clearly considering it anyway.

"I am not out of my mind."

"You came to Brazil. With Trent. On a moment's notice. Because he suggested whoever took over Rockfort _might_ be Veronique Ashford." Jill had an impressive glare, almost as good as Chris at his angriest. "You are out of your goddamned mind."

"Someone who might be Veronique Ashford has Rebecca on Rockfort Island. If it is Veronique, I can play bait, and if it isn't, I can still create a distraction."

"And shoot Veronique."

Preferably in the face with a rocket launcher. "After I get Rebecca."

"So, you're what - planning to go in with Carlos and either sneak through or blow something up - that was your plan. Claire, if you ever call Chris reckless again, I'm going to laugh in your face."

Claire chose not to point out that Jill already did that. "The more involved plans always blow up in my face."

"Generally you make them blow up. What the hell were you thinking?"

"Dr. Ross hasn't been able to duplicate Rebecca's work yet."

Jill went still and silent for a moment, the glare easing up. "The BSAA is entirely competent."

"I'm not trying to call you incompetent, I'm - "

"Imitating your brother and acting like you have to handle everything personally." Jill shook her head. "This is a heavily guarded, active base, not an outbreak site. However." Jill scowled at her. "BSAA South America has insisted on adding you to the original scouting mission. I'm sending Piers and Carlos with you."

BSAA South America was probably about to get audited. She was being a hypocrite; she'd have kicked Trent's and several other people's collective asses if he'd tried this with TerraSave. "What about Coen?"

"You want to take him along?" Jill sounded and looked even more dubious.

Claire shook her head. "No. I think he's telling the truth, but I still don't trust him with a weapon at my back."

Coen was a witness and would remain in BSAA custody for the present; BSAA South America wanted to question him further about the base, and Jill wanted to question him about Rebecca, Trent, and Sutcliffe-Bonneville.

\-----

The tests results displayed on the screen were devoid of context, but the ones Rebecca immediately recognized were all related to T-Virus, either directly or methods of detecting viral load and response; she was reasonably certain the others were several varieties of human genetic testing and non-viral blood tests. She couldn't tell if any of them belonged to her. She'd heated up one of the frozen meals, washed up in the shower and dressed, and nothing had changed; Ashford hadn't bothered sending her another communication. She hadn't spotted any hypodermic marks among all the bruises, but that wasn't helpful; there were other ways of administering the virus. She'd checked her eyes, neither of which had gone red and watery like Karen's had all those years ago. No fever, no rash or itching, no confused thoughts yet.

She tied up the skirt to keep from tripping on the hem and collapsed into the chair again, her leg hurting too much to stand. That was going to make an escape attempt difficult. The door was too solid for her to batter down, and the lock was on the wrong side; she'd lay odds it was reinforced as well. There wasn't much here to use as a weapon; the only things not secured was the chair she was sitting in, and it wasn't particularly heavy, probably not enough to effectively hit someone. The silverware was dull and lightweight; she might be able to damage an eye, but she doubted she could move fast enough to get the chance.

Ashford was using her as bait; she hoped somebody - Chris or Jill, even Leon - was around to sit on Claire before she took it.


End file.
